last night at the fairmount
the li'l stoogeband played a good show because, for some reason, we don't play any bad shows. after next friday night at the moon, however, we'll be taking a couple of months off from live gigs, as the mighty me-thinks gots a bunch of shows in january and the great tyrant plans to play some dates with french despoilers the gunslingers when they're in texas and oklahoma around sxsw time. hopefully by the time we're out of hibernation we'll be able to finally unleash "30 seconds over tokyo" and other new wonderment.
before us, the great trumpeter-composer-bandleader dennis gonzalez and his sons aaron gonzalez (bass) and stefan gonzalez (drums) -- who will have been performing under the rubric yells at eels for a decade next year -- filled our ears with energetic and exploratory extemporizations on toons both old and new (including a personal fave, "document for toshinori kondo"). their new record, renegade spirits (with nawlins saxophonist tim green and art ensemble of chicago percussion wizard famoudou don moye) is a corker and in the fullness of time, a review i penned will appear in the fort worth weekly. unfortunately, stefan was under the weather and unable to sit in on bass clarinet with the stoogeband as planned -- maybe another time.
opening was forest ward, who played a fantastical solid wood drumkit of his own design and construction, along with various percussion implements, a baritone sax, a kora, a '50s vintage hewlett-packard tone generator, and other instruments through a sequencer to create a long, hypnotic, ambient piece that put me in mind of the taj mahal travellers as well as forest's old band ohm, whose other living member nathan brown was in attendance. dennis g. said it reminded him of his own very first performance, at metamorphosis records in dallas, when he recorded bass, drum, and clarinet parts on a teac 4-track recorder in real time, then played his trumpet over the resultant recording. i dug forest's sounds enough to invite him to open for PFFFFT! and bill pohl (who played the last song with yells at eels) at the fairmount next sunday, december 21st. then again, forest's girfriend jeanne reports that a woman at the bar was complaining that "this is the longest soundcheck i've ever heard!" which just goes to show ya.
before us, the great trumpeter-composer-bandleader dennis gonzalez and his sons aaron gonzalez (bass) and stefan gonzalez (drums) -- who will have been performing under the rubric yells at eels for a decade next year -- filled our ears with energetic and exploratory extemporizations on toons both old and new (including a personal fave, "document for toshinori kondo"). their new record, renegade spirits (with nawlins saxophonist tim green and art ensemble of chicago percussion wizard famoudou don moye) is a corker and in the fullness of time, a review i penned will appear in the fort worth weekly. unfortunately, stefan was under the weather and unable to sit in on bass clarinet with the stoogeband as planned -- maybe another time.
opening was forest ward, who played a fantastical solid wood drumkit of his own design and construction, along with various percussion implements, a baritone sax, a kora, a '50s vintage hewlett-packard tone generator, and other instruments through a sequencer to create a long, hypnotic, ambient piece that put me in mind of the taj mahal travellers as well as forest's old band ohm, whose other living member nathan brown was in attendance. dennis g. said it reminded him of his own very first performance, at metamorphosis records in dallas, when he recorded bass, drum, and clarinet parts on a teac 4-track recorder in real time, then played his trumpet over the resultant recording. i dug forest's sounds enough to invite him to open for PFFFFT! and bill pohl (who played the last song with yells at eels) at the fairmount next sunday, december 21st. then again, forest's girfriend jeanne reports that a woman at the bar was complaining that "this is the longest soundcheck i've ever heard!" which just goes to show ya.
posted by stashdauber at 9:01 PM
2 Comments:
to be embarrassingly honest, I thought the same thing about Forest's set for about 5 minutes, until I saw Ray and some others standing in front of the stage and realized "oh, THIS IS the performance." Not really my cup of tea.
But Yells at Eels and the Stoogeband were great. Better sound than we usually hear at the Fairmount, too.
Life is just a long soundcheck..
K
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