…Live in Buenos Aries, 2018…playing to a clearly enthusiastic and appreciative crowd.
These guys are quickly becoming one of my all-time favorite bands. Well…quickly as in over the last 5 years or so….one cannot rush these things…
They’re like punk meets Engrish (sometimes…they’re mostly instrumental) meets post-rock meets math rock meets good old fashioned Rock and Roll.
And I love to watch the guitarist on the right (I still don’t know all their names…but the one on the right, who–sorry dudes–sings rather horribly [but somehow still charmingly and fittingly]).
…and sometimes you can see why he wears one kneepad.
…and sometimes you can see why he duck-tapes his shoes to his feet.
…and sometimes you have to wonder why he doesn’t also wear a helmet.
Really, basically, unlike any other band at the time. If not ever. Not least for their mix of musical styles and inter-racial membership. Funk. R&B. Soul. Blues. Plain ‘Ole Rock & Roll.
With that incredible rhythm section of B. B. Dickerson on bass, Harold Brown on drums (a singularly under-rated Great Drummer of Rock and Roll) and “Papa Dee” Allen on percussion (most notably here, on Congas–Holy Crapoli! What a player! He’s got some seriously broken blood vessels in his hands, I guarantee!). Plus Lee Oskar’s signature harmonica work (though not exactly in the fore-front of these performances….).
This is a recording from the great German TV show, Beat Club–So much great stuff from them on YT–Do not hesitate to check out their amazing line-up of vintage Rock & Roll performances from the greatest era of the late Sixties and Early Seventies–
They were truly unique. Terry Kath’s killer licks, the combined rhythm section of Peter Cetera’s driving bass and Daniel Seraphine’s frenetic beats, Robert Lamm’s funkalicious keyboard work, Kath’s and Cetera’s and Lamm’s signature vocals and Those Horns…..
Man……the shit was really goin’ down the year I was born….
And what a live show. I pretty sure I was boogie-in’ in the womb.
Highlight for me is Colour My World / Make Me Smile going into I’m a Man, (at 1:06:53) especially Kath’s blistering solo guitar work….and the horns….and the drums….and…and…and….Maaaaaaaaan…..
(OK, so I was born late in 1970….and I’m just now getting around to this….so it might seem like the math is off…..but it is still my 50th year on this planet so…..)
Without a doubt my one, all-time favorite band (if I had to pick….which I wouldn’t want to….so please don’t make me…..).
Pink Floyd, from a rare double album titled “More Blues”. From a tour they did after producing a soundtrack to the movie “More”, in 1969.
Recorded live at Montreux and Paris Theatre, London in 1970
My favorite era of Pink Floyd’s music.
Don’t get me wrong, I love their later stuff too. After all, my very first CD purchase (as in…when CD’s were still new as well as when I was still new to buying music) was, after all, a limited release of Dark Side of The Moon (arguably one of the greatest albums of all time) pressed on 24 karat gold (I still have it). And I love Animals, Wish You Were Here, The Wall…..
But their early, post-Syd Barret stuff is my favorite. And this is an awesome example of them at their creative peak. Just before Live at Pompeii. Just before Dark Side of the Moon.
Been a while since I did one of these, but I recently came across this “lockdown” performance by one of my all-time favorite musicians/composers/performers and I had to share.
There is Jazz. There is Piano. There is Cross-Cultural Music. There is Jazz Piano. There is Cross-Cultural Jazz Piano Music.
And then there is Tigran Hamasyan, in whom they all become one, and he becomes one with them. One living, breathing Behemoth of Passion: he and the piano become the one body that delivers forth……this……Universe of Sound.
I have never witnessed another pianist who is so at one with his instrument. I swear that, watching him play, one can see him swinging his instrument around–as much as any Jimi Hendrix or David Gilmour or Joe Satriani does with their guitar–through some kind of 4th-Dimensional Space that he is creating right there in front of us. And he is taking us there, into that space, leading us through strange enchanted lands of Tone and Harmony…
…and Rhythm….let’s not forget what amazing Rhythmical Journeys he is capable of taking us on as naturally as we take a walk down the block for a pack of smokes.
Now, what really gets me about this performance, if you pay attention, is the near-alien, almost inhuman, organic-machine-like movement and precision of his hands (especially the right) that you can see throughout the video but really comes to the fore starting at about the 4:48 mark…..
And, really, if you think about it, it is rather alien…..Tigran and Piano Become One…..a Homunculus of Human Tissue, Steel, Brass, Felt and Wood….(from the elbow up, his right hand really is rather reminiscent of the face-huggers from the Alien movies….no?)
Here is a great in-depth discussion of some (perhaps only a bit) of what Tigran is doing (poly-) rhythmically in his music…if you feel like getting your head bent…..
And here: the two songs mentioned by Mr. Bruce…..if you’re of a mind to hear how all this rhythmical-technical wizardry plays out to create amazing music…..
And here…..finally…..your actual Sunday Soundtrack. Tigran playing an awe-inspiring concert of solo piano music……
A Prayer Like Gravity 