Wednesday, March 02, 2005
Night On The Town, Plus Day Stuff Too
The sun shines brightly on me today, a hope-laden harbinger of good things to come. Of course I’ll be spending most all of my time in my beige cube under the glowing light tubes, but I’ll know it’s a nice day outside somewhere and that will help. Why the non-bad mood? Many reasons, some of which I am at liberty to divulge.... fer example, I got some damn fine sleep last night. I went to yoga class spent and without energy, my legs sore, my mind adrift and without focus, expecting nothing of myself; naturally, as the class progressed I found myself stronger, better balanced, and overall less incompetent than almost ever. That’s always a good feeling. She even got me to make a major dent in the big crick that took up residence in my shoulder a couple weeks ago. I got permission at work to transition one of my more onerous tasks to the new Admin Asst; I have plenty to keep me busy during my daily forays into the office. I even had a nice lunch yesterday with Pete at the local greasy wok he’s introduced me to. These days, and yesterday in particular, have gone pretty well.
“But what about that foreshadowing, chuckles?”, I hear you query. “You mentioned sore legs and a sore shoulder. Are you going to tie all this together?” My coy response: the sound of one hand, drinking. Then, one hand burping discretely into a napkin, finally obliquely whispering, “Yes… and no.”
My point: sore shoulder - personal ineptitude, fell over, wrenched muscle, nothing serious, nothing to see here ma’m move along now. But: sore legs - The GE Smith show at the Music Hall. Whoo-hoo.
I left work at 5:30 and took a 38 into the ‘loin to procure some cheap grub at Shalimar - a “burger roll,” I think they called it, essentially beef shwarma on naan with that delightful cucumber yogart sauce and scallions, plus a potato naan that was a bit gooey by the time I got it out of the paper bag in which they’d packed the steaming hot bread. Some older guys asked me to take their picture while I was there. Once I got to the Music Hall, about an 8 block walk away, I found Jon waiting for me in line about 20 people from the front; right behind him were all these cool people, some of whom I already knew through Ralph, from the Morehouse collective in Oakland - there were about 10 of them and I introduced those I knew to Jon and met the new ones and ate my supper on the street as Dave and his friend from work, and Ralph and Mike, all showed up to join us. With our superior numbers we were able to secure the entire section all the way down front at the left corner of the stage, where Andy and Kim eventually joined us.
One interesting thing about the show’s set-up was that they were filiming a DVD of some damn sort or other and the area right in front of the stage was blocked off for cameramen; a huge boom swung a remotely-controlled camera around over the audience’s head over on the other side of the auditorium, across from us. Among other things, this gave me a really good look at some of the front-row regulars, and when it comes to Hot Tuna shows, there are for sure a cadre of regulars whom I think I am beginning to recognize, at least so far as this town goes. So that was a fun extra aspect of the affair.
The show was a blast: GE Smith started off with David Lindley, who just rocked the house. I mean no disrespect to Smith by this - later in the show when he had a full rock band it was wonderful to watch him work them, indicate what he wanted from whom, his facial expressions and communication with his colleagues and his obvious enjoyment of what he was doing; he was a master of the tone of his instrument and got such wonderful and varied sounds out of it that I was astonished right through the encore. He is technically crisp and has his licks down cold, he would shine on any stage.
But Lindley - man, that guy was a total surprise. He comes out looking as if Gordon Jump had dropped a lot of acid a long time ago and chosen a different life path, I don’t think anyone knew it was him till Smith introduced him. And this guy really laid things out - he plays slide steel and his tone was so clean and sharp, his musical instincts so natural and infectious, he had us all eating out of his hand three songs into the first set. Dude, he wasn’t even on the marquee. Next time he’s not on the marquee in your town, check him out and tell me I’m wrong. The foregoing was a double dog dare.
So it was Smith and Lindley for a while, doing traditional and old-timey acoustic picking and strumming tunes; and then Smith played with a rock combo including Pete Sears on keyboards (about four feet from me) and Jimmy Sanchez on drums, which is a name I find inexplicably entertaining so I remembered it. There was a brief interlude with a sort of torch singer who played guitar, with rock backup - she was good but so unlike the rest of what was going on that it didn’t really fit in too well. This all was followed by a set of acoustic Hot Tuna - Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Cassady, two of the greatest musicians to emerge from the second half of the twentieth century. They took songs I’ve heard hundreds of times and made them so fresh and relevant and immediate that I was just absolutely riveted to them for more than an hour. And then on top of that, I was close enough to hear them talking without the mikes, to see the glances and nods and shrugs that constitute their communication after 30 years of playing together, and of course to see their hands and fingers as they shaped the music as if it were a tangible thing, a cat’s cradle of sound strung between their hands....
The encore featured everybody coming back on stage - except for the torch singer, whom I saw standing off to the side of the stage watching with an expression in her eyes I found impenetrable. The show let out after midnight. My alarm goes off at 5:20 a.m.; I’m usually in bed and literally dozing off by 9:30 at night. I caught the 38 back home and had an uneventful ride, and then slept deeply and well till yesterday morning. I think that catches us up for now. Tomorrow: People I Saw Monday Night.
