Not much to say about last night's Endless Boogie show apart from the fact that it was in the 99th percentile of Endless Boogie–oriented excellence. They were hitting on cylinders the likes of which haven't come out of Detroit in 35 years. They are so manly, these men.
At the same time, they are quite feminine in their sound and way. I'd like to be the first to get out in front on this issue: I think Endless Boogie really is the band for all genders and dispositions. Mets fans too.
The Studio at Webster Hall is a good room for rock music (needs more Os for the marquee though), the sound just spread like night creeping over the high plains. One particular monster jam sounded fresh to my ears, but a well-placed source informed me that it was an unrecorded oldie. That'll hopefully be redressed soonly. Endless Boogie are hitting the road for a coupla weeks, so look alive out there in the South and Midwest.
Amy Annelle brought the nurture of nature to my East Village roof last night, reprising a low-key appearance from last summer (or was it the summer before?). This time, I endeavored to actually tell people about it, and a coded message during her WFMU live set the day before also helped gather a crowd of about 20, which was just right for the space we had.
In fact, pretty much everything was just right: The sky, glowing and bruised; the breezes on full breeze; and Amy, who played for about 75 minutes at a volume that dueted (not dueled) with the city ambience that drifted up seven stories.
Folks spread out across the roof on throw rugs, blankets, dirty jeans. A batch of declared fans, a few old friends (Amy's and mine), a handful of curious neighbors who stuck around, a trio of effusive Oklahomans converted into believers on the spot, a couple who just moved from SF and felt like they'd won the lottery in learning of the show, and one sweetly hyperactive puppy. The natural tremble in Amy's voice reminded us all of the infinite. Time didn't stop, but it did seem a little less indifferent to everyone for a while.
Like a comet that swings into our orbit every so often, this fire-in-the-night-sky of a scene. The actual best line: "I'm gonna be with you in a second."
An old friend "in the business" helped remind me today why I work in and around music, where the compensation is something to sneeze at (or even puke on). It's important to be reminded of things we already know. Today, unfortunately, I was reminded of two magic memories for the saddest reasons.
I saw Les Paul play only once, maybe five or six years ago. The old man was gigging in Midtown every Monday, for years, at Iridium. My friend Maggie was in town for a few days and I had the idea that it would be fun and not the same as just going to any old rock club for whatever band. At the time I enjoyed the sort of life where I could simply ring someone up and ask, and there'd be two tickets at the door, with nice reserved seats, and "No no, don't worry about meeting the minimum," which is good, cause I might not have been able to. Les Paul was 89 or 90, and still as in love with his guitar and the playing of it as anyone can love anything. If he had lost a step over the years, it really seemed only a step, even dealing with arthritis. Watching his long, craggy fingers dance on the strings was quite literally amazing — amazing in the true Webster's sense (as opposed to the modern vernacular). This master was funny and outgoing, not like an uncle or grandfather but like us, sharp and crass and not missing a beat, a glance or a comment. He ragged on his bandmates playfully, traded jabs with the crowd, told us every story that passed through his mind. Sometimes I wonder what people mean when they use the word "generous" to describe an artist, but that was him. He was playing one night a week, sometimes two shows a night I think, well into his 90s. He pretty much invented this stuff and was pretty much the best at it all along the way. Les Paul, ladies and gentlemen. Do follow the link on his name at the top of this graph — just incredible.
And Rashied Ali. I got to see him play a number of times earlier this decade, solo and in small groups, at Tonic, where I DJed with my friend Chris (we were The Polar Bear Club, extending a cool tradition that had started in Minneapolis). Man, did I see a lot of great music in that room. Friday nights at Tonic were usually my first chance to relax and have some fun after a stressful week at the magazine. We went from 9pm to 3 or 4am most nights, so I'd often walk outside for a break; Norfolk Street then was dark and quiet in a way no part of the Lower East Side is anymore. Rashied had a solo gig upstairs at Tonic one Friday night, maybe 30 people there. That whole thing always struck me: Rashied Ali...is playing the drums right here, now, in this room...for 30 people. We had more than that downstairs (our thing was free, though).
I had watched most of his set, caught up in the storm of his playing, and some time later in the night walked outside to decharge my batteries. Across the street, a big old sedan was parked. I noticed a silhouette in the driver's seat. My eyes focused, and I realized the silhouette was looking at me; my eyes focused more, and I realized the silhouette was Rashied Ali, the guy who copiloted all the way out with Coltrane and spent the years since punching tickets for comparably heavy trips to other unmapped planes with all kinds of big hitters.
We stared at each other for a few seconds, or maybe an hour, who knows, and then he waved for me to come over to the car. When I got to the window I noticed a ribbon of smoke in the darkness. I think I laughed, and then like it was no big deal he asked if I wanted to help him finish his jazz cigarette, which he held up in the biggest fingers I thought I'd ever seen on a man. We sat right there on Norfolk Street and talked like regular people who'd known each other for a while. Except for when he spoke about the importance of "getting free," which he did with an uncommon authority, a relaxed, confident fervor that identified as religious way more than anything I know of as "religion." I didn't talk then, just listened.
I was a little bowled over by the experience afterward, but when I mentioned it to some friends working at the club they all were like, wave of the hand, "Oh yeah, Rashied's hilarious," like they were talking about an old aunt or something.
Rest in peace, Les Paul and Rashied Ali. Two real masters who may not have had a thing in common other than greatness before today.
Cass McCombs, who's never been through NYC with the same band twice, played tonight at Joe's with what was undoubtedly his best-looking assemblage yet, including local all-stars Andy Macleod (drums — worth pointing out as Andy plays everything, and well, in his particular idiom) and Melanie Moser (keybs, vox, sparkly dress).
It was all about Cass though. The scorpio (if they got the date right) has been one of Earth's best songwriters since he burst from some Grecian forehead earlier this decade, but his newest, the spacious Catacombs — very good, not nearly his best yet aligned perfectly in constellation with his others — arrives in tune with some vibey awareness tipping point about his persistent mercurial excellence. Last August he played the South Street Seaport (great venue, free show) to a middling crowd (by the by, he had an entirely different band, looked pulled from a Tennessee chain gang in the ’30s), and it seemed he was just destined to live in the interstices. Less than a year later and it feels like everybody's talking. Halleluwah. For people who try to make sense of life through the lens of music, McCombs's five records so far are like an observatory on top of an old volcano in Hawaii. And you can step right up to the telescope and have a look, and see whatever you see.
Onstage McCombs moves within a studied modesty so note-perfect that it couldn't be contrived; he's never seemed uncomfortable up there, but I couldn't remember if I'd ever heard him really say anything directly to the audience before. (He shyly removed his jacket at one point, and by commenting on it, primed the crowd to do its best impersonation of an ’80s sit-com studio audience.) His set tonight omitted "Deseret," the 21st century's secret-most-beautiful song, but included many of the rest, including a coolly tamped-down "City of Brotherly Love" and a sweet "Crick in My Neck," with McCombs — also a judicious handler of space and time on the guitar — spraying chord-arrows through the veil.
The only thing missing from tonight's gig was the low-light anarchic radiance of Karen Black:
She's just got the wrong last name. Which is no more her fault than the fact that I'm in the wrong hemisphere twice over for the eclipse, but hey. Who wouldn't rather know what the person below has been up to?
No compromise in defense of Mother Earth (photo: Dennis Keeley)
But as the saying goes, one door that wasn't really there is just a wall, and another swings open on the L to Brooklyn. Nobody's consolation prize, Sophia Knapp played a solo set at Bruar Falls on the night her band Lights' new record, Rites, came out. Rites, which was recorded, will be getting a lot of proper attention this summer; no album in memory has taken an arrow for your psychedelic disco love quite like this one. But Sophia played an entire set of her own pointedly direct songs, which I hadn't heard before. They were great—or, well, maybe they'd seem less so in anyone else's hands, but Sophia has a way of snatching back near and total clichés of beauty and romance from the Hallmarxists, blowing away the dust and replacing it with…different dust. I might not stand or even sit for anyone else singing of golden mountains and love that goes by "love," but Sophia's a guilelessly pure spirit; she isn't getting away with anything. And she'll probably never get her due as a guitarist—one of those seemingly simple yet calmly precise players who doesn't strike, stroke or strum a note without purpose.
