new york, part 2

after hitting the galleries we got dinner and hit the local timeout ny to choose our evenings entertainment.

the prospects looked pretty good for the evening:

steve reich and friends- great show but... $35 for tickets is too much for even a diehard fan.

in your ear festival, evan ziporyn and gamelan galak tika $20- i really like his music, but would rather see him with bang on a can.

if either of these shows traveled to la, i would probably go. but for a night on the town in ny, i don't want to sit around that long in one place.

along those lines i guess bang on a can had a not very successful performance of philip glass's at royce hall last week. (mark swed, la times)

The Glass pieces were "Music in Similar Motion" and "Music in Fifths." These are scores that when Glass first started playing them with his ensemble of winds and electric keyboards had the distinction of either expanding your consciousness or driving you mad. The repetition is numbing; the additions and subtractions of notes or beats can be barely perceptible. They went on for a really long time, and the players' concentration inevitably lagged. But the missed entrances and even outright ensemble train wrecks were often memorable.

well back to last saturday night. both concerts didn't really compute into our money/interest/cheap drinks equation, so we decided on the following plan.

we would go to a freebie and pay for one.

we were in luck. the free show was just down the street at the luna lounge. multiple bands and free music never go wrong.

as we walked in the first band almost ruined our night. at first we thought they were doing the weezer/geekband thing, very wrong. besides having a trombone/theremin double (did they want him in because he has the trombone, theremin or truck?), they were great at emptying out the room after one song.

next band... my new favorite

stupid

somewhere between x/weezer/pixies, they gave a show that made me forget i write/play music.



anytime i can stop analyzing a performance and get into the moment is rare, but i worship the groups who get me to that place.
any description of the show doesn't do it justice... go see for yourself

on second thought i will try to explain what did it for me. their music is the perfect combination of raw energy/theatrics/good songwriting. any group that can put that much energy on the stage while still performing gets me everytime.

the rest of the night is pretty easy to figure out... its not possible to see two great bands in one night. we slunk on to tonic to see what now sounded like a bad idea

the concept...

acoustic drum and bass

not in the jazz way, but electronic music performed by acoustic instruments.

the best i could say is that they had the crowd with them for the first song, until the one switched from his bleep/blop magic machine to trumpet. no matter what you do, its hard to get out of miles's shadow from bitches brew. i'm sure the crowd knows who miles is, but the vibe was like; you worked up a bitchin groove for the last 8 minutes for that? at this point i had to get my money's worth so i started the inappropriate big man dancing. it didn't make me feel much better.

who would have known acoustic drum and bass would miss...

were all suckers