Jazz, blues and folk - More adventures in New York

I've written a couple of blogs recently on how New York is my favourite city for live music. The best musicians on the planet - the guys and gals playing on all your records - are either in NY or LA. Any night of the week, except probably Monday, you can see them playing in small clubs. 

Most recently, in the late summer of 2019, before we knew anything about lockdowns, I saw jazz guitarist Bill Frisell at the Village Vanguard, ahead of my epic trip upstate for the 50th anniversary of Woodstock.

This little jazz club in Greenwich Village is where John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Keith Jarrett (Nude Ants) and other legends have recorded live albums. The traditions of excellent musicianship have endured through the decades and Frisell has been a regular here for years, sometimes confounding his local followers with yet another change of direction. 

The guy I sat next to had been coming here for several years from his home in New Jersey and told how Frisell had experimented with different guitar sounds (he uses a lot of effects pedals) and styles (surf music, 50s rock) in a hit-and-miss fashion over recent years. 

Thankfully, tonight he was back to playing little in the way of 'experimental' sounds. His three-piece jazz band improvised around half a dozen tunes for 90 minutes straight - no between song breaks - just one tune merging into the next, seamlessly. That's impressive.

No video from that night, but here's a clip that's right up to date. Bill's trio playing a lockdown concert (masks and all) outside his home in Brooklyn. 

And what follows is a selection of the choicest NY gigs I've attended in the last several years.

Chick Corea at The Blue Note

Back in December 1992, just before we were married, my wife and I flew to New York to visit her brother and sister in law in Connecticut. Out in the suburbs it was freezing and the snow was piled high. There wasn't much to do out there and we were going a bit stir crazy. So one weekend we ventured into New York and booked a hotel in midtown Manhattan, opposite Carnegie Hall on 57th Street. 

On the Saturday night, after an expensive restaurant meal, we had tickets to see Chick Corea and his band at The Blue Note in Greenwich Village. 

And what a band that was - as always Chick had the cream of the jazz players working with him. On this occasion it was Vinnie Colaiuta on drums, John Pattitucci on bass, Bob Berg on sax, Wallace Roney on trumpet. 

The Blue Note is probably best described as intimate. It's fairly narrow and we had a table facing the stage. Vinnie's drums were set up at the front, so he was going to be prominent whatever happened. And boy was he prominent! The guy's a monster drummer to this day but back then he was out of this world. The master of the polyrhythm.

Here's a clip of Corea, Pattitucci and Colaiuta at the Blue Note in Tokyo that same year, 1992.

Kevin Eubanks at The Blue Note
Once again, this was a show I had booked in advance. Kevin Eubanks was based in Los Angeles at the time (2009) working as the musical director of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, so this was a rare live appearance on the east coast. 

With Kevin Eubanks at the Blue Note

I sat in the front row, right in front of Kevin. The policy at the Blue Note is no filming but Kevin made a point of saying he didn't mind, so I filmed it - quite a lot of it. See for yourself how close I was!

His band included brother Robin on trombone and the whirlwind Marvin 'Smitty' Smith on drums. The intensity of the playing at times was just astonishing, sitting right up in front of them. 

After the show, I got talking to Kevin about what he was up to now. He had recently finished on the Tonight Show and was planning to record some new music with the 'Spirit Talk' band that included Smitty Smith and brother Robin. Kevin was charming and happy to chat. What a privilege to be this close to musical genius. There's more of these clips on Youtube. Three in all.


Robben Ford at BB King's 
On the same trip, I went to see ace guitarist Robben Ford playing at BB King's blues club on 42nd Street - don't look for it, it's not there anymore. 

I'd seen Robben on previous occasions and he would play all styles of blues, but by this stage he'd evolved an amazing ability to take the music off into new soundscapes. I'd describe it as psychedelic blues. 

Robben played some of the most inventive guitar I've ever heard. Seriously, the Electric Ladyland era Jimi Hendrix would have been proud. 

One of the greats, and what a musical pedigree he has too - Miles Davis and Joni Mitchell to name but two.

In this clip he is playing the song Supernatural on his 1957 Les Paul. Les had died the previous week and Robben made special mention of nights he'd spent at the Iridium club, where Les would play on Tuesday nights. 

Filming was frowned upon at BB King's. I was told off by a waitress earlier in the set, so I had to be discreet, hence the slightly eccentric filming at some points. But stick with it, because he goes off into some wonderful improvisation.

After Robben's show, I hopped on the subway downtown to catch another of Kevin Eubanks' sessions at the Blue Note. He played a completely different set and I was sat at the back this time. Not quite as intense but still a lot of fun. 

The Fab Faux celebrate John Lennon's 70th Birthday - Radio City Music Hall
It was 2010 and coming up for 30 years since Lennon had been shot just a few blocks away. I had seen this show advertised on the web, a complete presentation of John Lennon tunes played by the foremost creators of Beatle music, the Fab Faux.

The interior of Radio City Music Hall

For the Lennon show, the added attraction was the venue, Radio City Music Hall, this marvellous Art Deco theatre in midtown Manhattan.

The show started boldly with Tomorrow Never Knows, the band successfully recreating the tape effects and vocal distortions (using a megaphone) of the original. 

The Fab Faux's attention to detail is legendary; the resonating guitar intro to 'I Feel Fine' was perfectly executed; flutes were present and correct at the end of 'You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away'.

Augmented by a horn and string section, the Fabs got the measure of the psychedelic (trippy strings on 'I Am The Walrus') and the abstract (Happiness Is A Warm Gun). The choir added gorgeous backing to 'Across The Universe' and an immaculate 'Instant Karma'. The show reached a final crescendo with 'Revolution' followed by A 'Day In The Life'. It was a fantastic show, covering Lennon's entire career and recruited flawlessly. 

Chick Corea and John McLaughlin - Blue Note
There have been nights when I haven't been able to choose between two gigs in NYC, but by going to an early evening show I have been able to get across town to see the other one too. Robben Ford and Kevin Eubanks was one example, another was this night in October 2011,  when I was torn between two must-see shows. 

The first was one of the shows in the month-long season at the Blue Note jazz club in honour of Chick Corea's birthday. This one featured John McLaughlin. The early show was capped by an appearance by Gail Moran, Chick's wife, who had been a member of the Mahavishnu Orchestra in the 1970s. They played Smile of the Beyond, from the MO album 'Apocalypse' with Gail singing and the drummer Brian Blade whipping up a storm in the concluding passage of the tune.

I don't have video of that. Someone did post it on youtube but it seems to have been removed. Here is a short clip of the band I took from my seat at the Blue Note.

and here, up close, you get to appreciate just how out there these guys can get. Brian Blade propels them forward and Kenny Garrett shows why comparisons with Coltrane are justified.

Shawn Colvin - City Winery
I had booked tickets for Chick and John before I left on my trip, but when I got to my hotel and checked the local Time Out guide, I saw that Shawn Colvin was also playing that night at the City Winery. I love Shawn's voice and have been a fan ever since her first album Steady On in 1990. 

As luck would have it, I had booked for the early show at Blue Note - they do two shows a night - so if I was smart I could probably get to both shows. 

I slipped away promptly at the end of the Blue Note show and took a short taxi ride to see the lovely Shawn, one of my favourite singers, at the City Winery. I was glad I did; Shawn's records, right through her career, have been some of my lasting favourites. 

It was just her on stage, so a marked contrast from the way-out jazz I had just seen, which made it all the more special. 

Tedeschi Trucks Band - Beacon Theatre
Three years ago I was lucky to catch Tedeschi Trucks Band during their annual season of shows at the Beacon Theatre. 

They are a tremendous band, very much in the spirit of the big bands of the 70s like the Allman Brothers (this is their take on Whipping Post) and Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs and Englishmen (and here's their version of The Letter)

TTB cover a wide range of styles in their set - blues, funk, jazz - and they keep up the intensity with some remarkable soloing. Derek Trucks is a unique guitar player and his solos build to such a crescendo. Just when you think he's peaked, he goes one more. Thrilling to watch. Susan Tedeschi is no slouch either, and gives the band a soulful base with her vocals and guitar. 

Each night they had a different guest star and on the night I was there they had Dave Mason. He needed his set up a version of All Along The Watchtower. Mason played the 12-string intro to Jimi Hendrix's version of the song back in 1968. For their encore TTB brought Dave back on to sing 'Feelin Alright'.

As New Yorkers say: "What's not to like?"

IF YOU LIKE MY BLOG, PLEASE HIT THE FOLLOW BUTTON ON THE SIDE PANEL THANKS

My first big gig in New York was in the 1970s - Bob Marley & The Wailers at Madison Square Garden. 

At home with the Lennons, 1967

Another picture of domesticity, but one that was to come to an end soon afterwards. It is the Spring of 1967 and John Lennon is putting his feet up at the family home he shared with first wife Cynthia and their son Julian in Weybridge, Surrey.  

Surrounded by the traditional framed pictures and ornaments are the tell-tale signs of someone who has turned on to a new way of life, but has not quite let go of the old one. He's reading a copy of the counter-culture newspaper International Times and the cabinets are festooned with promotional stickers for Captain Beefheart's first album.

John's mind was clearly miles away from here. But while Paul McCartney was living in the heart of London, close to Abbey Road studios, John was cut off from all that and was going through what Cynthia described as his 'neurotic phase'. 

She said, "He didn't know where his life was going and he was fed up with being a Beatle. He'd spend a lot of his time in bed with a notepad. When he woke up he'd write a few words down and then maybe go over to the piano. He was basically dropping out. Everything he was doing outside the home was pretty high-powered."

As Derek Taylor attested, John also seemed to spend a lot of time taking acid, even once remarking one morning, as he was driving Taylor in his psychedelic Rolls Royce, that he had it for breakfast. 

1967 marked a real turning point for The Beatles. Having unveiled their crowning achievement as a band, Sgt Pepper, in June, they had shed the final layers of their moptop image and were in full experimental mode musically. 

Though they were forced to keep the whole Beatle gravy train on the rails, they had become disillusioned with it all. They had stopped touring, so it was only in the studio where they were still in any sense a band. 

As it was, they "battled on against overwhelming oddities" through 1967 and 68 with Magical Mystery Tour and the White Album. John's pursuit of something to make sense of his life brought about his fateful meeting with Yoko, the encounter that would lead him to, as he said, "break up a happily married state of boredom".

with son Julian, 1967

As Philip Norman writes in his biography of Lennon: "All four Beatles, kaftaned and beaded, sat at the yogi's feet to listen to his Buddhist wisdom. This was mysticism in an easily digested, tabloid form, instantly appealing to young earthly gods for whom real self-denial was unthinkable. 

"His route to spiritual regeneration involved no special training, no memorising of complex prayers or incantations, and next to no personal inconvenience. It was bliss without the effort. "

John wanted to take Yoko, but since the pilgrimage included wives, he had no choice but to take Cynthia. They stayed in a village on the banks of the River Ganges (Rishikesh) looking towards the snow-flecked Himalayas, though their living conditions were far from spartan. Their bungalows had hot water and western plumbing, and a handful of two-rupee notes bought extra home comforts, from chocolate bars to booze and hash. 

For all the Beatles, it was an enforced slowdown from the lunatic pace that had not let up for seven years, since they left Liverpool for Hamburg and their careers suddenly took off. Day after day, there was nothing to do but sit and think.

"John seemed happy, strumming guitars with Paul and George in the balmy sunshine and even holding hands with Cynthia. She was convinced their difficult marriage was entering a new phase of companionship and mutual tolerance. What she didn't know was that John was all the time receiving postcards from Yoko, which his minders had strict orders to forward to him in plain brown envelopes so she would suspect nothing. Often they consisted of a single thought, in Yoko's tiny, arty script: 'Watch for me - I'm a cloud in the sky."

IF YOU LIKE MY BLOG, PLEASE HIT THE FOLLOW BUTTON ON THE SIDE PANEL
THANKS

Also on the blog:

The Beatles retreat from the madness of the road to create Revolver

My Visit To Abbey Road Studios

Some have gone, and some remain

Here's a strange magazine cover from February 1970. These people are approaching 30 (no age to be a rock star back then). So would they survive the next decade? For Circus to be asking the question, it must have been clear that the rock and roll lifestyle of the 1960s was going to result in more casualties, following the death of Brian Jones in 1969. What's surprising is not that some of these 20 rock stars died (three of them - Jimi, Janis and Jim in little over a year)  but that 13 of them are still with us.

It's interesting to see Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts are featured, but Keith Richards is not. Apart from Keef, who by any normal measure of abuse, should be dead by now, the most notable survivor here is golden-voiced hippie David Crosby.  Crosby, whose favourite pastime for many years was freebasing cocaine,  has come close to death on numerous occasions.  The catalogue of drug busts, car accidents, guns and overdoses make Keith Richards' story seem tame in comparison.

Here's just one of many stories: On March 7, 2004, Crosby was charged with criminal possession of a weapon, illegal possession of a hunting knife, illegal possession of ammunition and illegal possession of about 1 ounce of marijuana. Crosby left said items behind in his hotel room. Authorities said a hotel employee searched the suitcase for identification and found about an ounce of marijuana, rolling papers, two knives and a .45-caliber pistol. Crosby was arrested when he returned to the hotel to pick up his bag.

In the prologue to his autobiography, Long Time Gone, Crosby, when asked if he was ever stoned onstage, replied, “The answer to that is that never once, until I got out of prison, did I ever record, perform, or do anything any way except stoned. I did it all stoned.”

He's still with us and singing as beautifully as ever.

A Night With John Lennon - The Fab Faux at Radio City Music Hall

In 2010, while on a business trip to New York, I witnessed a unique show in celebration of John Lennon's life and music. It was billed as ‘The Fab Faux present A Night In The Life’. If you have heard them at all, you will know the Fab Faux, led by bassist Will Lee, recreate the Beatles songs extremely faithfully.

I had seen the show advertised on the web, when I did my usual pre-trip check of what's on. This is the same trip where I saw the open-air show by Zappa Plays Zappa at the unveiling of an FZ statue In Baltimore. 

For the Lennon show, the added attraction was the venue, Radio City Music Hall, a marvellous art deco theatre in midtown Manhattan.

The show started boldly with the song that signalled a new psychedelic direction for The Beatles - the last track on Revolver, 'Tomorrow Never Knows'. The Fab Faux successfully recreated the tape effects and vocal distortions (using a megaphone) of the original. 

 

Their attention to detail is legendary. The resonating guitar intro to 'I Feel Fine' was perfectly executed. Flutes were present and correct at the end of 'You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away'.

Equally impressive was their ability to convey an intensity to match Lennon’s original performances. In particular, drummer Rich Pagano did a convincing job on the ‘Mama don’t go, Daddy come home’ section of 'Mother'.

Augmented by the Hogshead Horns and the Crème Tangerine strings, the Fabs got the measure of the psychedelic (trippy strings on 'I Am The Walrus') and the abstract (Happiness Is A Warm Gun). 

 

The Nutopia Choir added gorgeous backing to 'Across The Universe' and an immaculate 'Instant Karma'. The show reached a final crescendo with 'Revolution' followed by A 'Day In The Life'.

It was a remarkable tribute, capturing the spirit of each distinctive period of Lennon's musical life. Everyone knows this music intimately, so it's a brave group that will try to recreate it. The Fab Faux do a fantastic job. If you ever get the chance, go and see them perform. 

Had he lived it's quite possible John may not have attained such musical heights as he did in the 1960s and 70s. But I think he would have been a force for positive change in other ways. In any case, it was emotional, to see these classic songs brought to life and to be reminded that their creator was such an amazing and unique talent. 

Here is the complete set list:

Tomorrow Never Knows  /   Whatever gets you through the night  /  Nowhere Man

Across The Universe  /   I’m A Loser  /  Come Together  /  Norwegian Wood  / I Feel Fine

You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away  /  Watching The Wheels   /   Strawberry Fields Forever  /   

No Reply  /  Happiness Is A Warm Gun  /  Rain  /  Cold Turkey  / I Want You (She’s So Heavy)

Interlude: The (original) Quarrymen: Maggie Mae

Working Class Hero   /  Mother /  Power To The People   /   Instant Karma   /   Because

Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite  /  Help!  /   Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds   /  Jealous Guy   /    

Mind Games  /  I Am The Walrus  / Yer Blues /   In My Life  /  Imagine  / Revolution  /   A Day In The Life

Encore: All You Need Is Love  /  Give Peace A Chance

 

 In Central Park West, across the road from the Dakota Building, is a small area dedicated to John, Strawberry Fields.

Also on this blog:

1966 - The Beatles escape the madness of the road to create Revolver

My Visit To Abbey Road Studios

LIFE magazine reports on 'The New Far-out Beatles', 1967

At Home With the Lennons, 1967