Masada/Cat Power show reports?

grady grady at ibiblio.org
Mon Nov 20 10:27:53 EST 2006


Well, the mix started out kinda sucking (you'd think that 4 guys who've 
played together that much wouldn't *need* a "mix" per se, and they 
wouldn't have if they'd been playing a venue more suited to the size of 
the crowd & the style of the music), inasmuch as I could barely hear the 
sax, and the trumpet was way-too-loud, but gradually over the course of 
the evening it got better.

MVP of the evening for me was bassist Greg Cohen, who was totally 
in-the-pocket the whole time. Just really first-rate.

I'd never seen any version of Masada before, though I've listened to a 
variety of the different ensembles on CD, and what struck me the most 
was how well the "project" worked, in the sense that they were all able 
to flow from the scripted bits into more free playing & back into the 
scripted bits. Sure, that's a commonplace of jazz, but with many groups, 
the seams between melodic intro/outtro and the solos are a bit more 
apparent, even jarring. Not so here. And what made this more interesting 
for me was the fact that sections of the pieces are *heavily* composed 
(there was sheet music onstage), plus the fact that Zorn was clearly 
conducting the band via hand-signals the whole time. And yet the stuff 
flowed beautifully & the energy-level was extraordinarily high the 
entire time.

Since the Masada music is designed to be sorta infinitely-recombinable, 
it all sounded *really* familiar -- in several places I was convinced 
they'd played one of the shorter, spazzier pieces *note-for-note* from 
the recording, but it's just as likely that it was parts of several 
others that I'd heard & recognized. The downside of this aspect of the 
project could be that after a while, it all starts to run together. 
"Luckily" they only played for maybe an hour, so we were nowhere near 
reaching that point.

In any case, I was far *more* blown-away by the Dex Romweber/Cat Power 
show at the Cradle last night. Easily one of the best shows I've ever 
seen, period. In case you didn't hear ahead of time, the Dex Romweber 
Duo currently consists of Dexter and his sister Sara, and their set last 
night was just fucking brilliant start-to-finish, Dex's music as it was 
meant to be played, with Sara channeling Crow where appropriate, but 
*swinging* a lot harder.

I don't even think I can go into suitable detail about the Cat Power 
set; it was 2 hours long (if you count 10 minutes at the front of the 
Memphis Rhythm Band warming up themselves & the crowd before Chan took 
the stage, plus 5 minutes in the middle for Teeny Hodges to sing one 
song (and he may be a minor Memphis legend, but that cat *cannot* sing) 
while Chan took a break), and it was about evenly split between 
incredibly gorgeous hard soul with full 10-piece band (2 gtrs, organ, 
bass, drums, trumpet, sax, violin, 2 backing vocalists), and Chan 
playing solo on either piano and guitar.

I guess I'd just say this: She's still batshit crazy, but in a way that 
does *not* impede her talent one iota. She's developed quite the 
repertoire of weird hand gestures & chicken-walk dance steps, and 
between songs she's fond of pointing out imaginary celebrities in the 
crowd, but either the sobriety or the meds or the discipline of touring 
with this huge band of people, who obviously love her, have fired her up 
to the point that she seems to truly love performing. She'd be scooting 
around the stage during the intro to a song, but when her cue came, she 
was *on the spot* at the mic, and her voice was every bit as rich & 
strange and beautiful as it is on record, if not moreso.

So it was like seeing the Cat Power you've always hoped/wished/dreamed 
to see, but without losing the personality that presumably makes it 
possible for her to continue to create her music. (And I suppose I 
should mention that the same seems very true, lately, of Dexter). I'm 
lousy with song titles or even with remembering which songs come from 
which albums, but they did most of The Greatest, some stuff from You Are 
Free, "Cross Bones Style" from Moon Pix (she said "I don't like playing 
this, but I do it for the band, I mean the fans"). At that moment I had 
a brief flash of hope that they'd medley into "Nude as the News" but in 
reality there was clearly no chance.

The solo stuff on piano/guitar was every bit as weird as it probably 
would've been back in the old days, had she ever been able to get it 
together enough to play the songs all the way through. I *think* she 
covered Otis Redding's "I've Been Loving You Too Long to Stop Now," but 
I can't be sure because the only part I recognized was the line "My love 
is growing stronger, as you become a habit to me." But that's kind of 
par for the course for her covers.

Other covers included "Rambling Man," Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" (with the 
full band, which, regardless of how you feel about the song, was 
genius), her version of "Satisfaction" reworked, with the full band 
vamping on the riff behind her, but still the withholding/omission of 
the chorus, which still worked, maybe even better than the solo version, 
umm, what else? Well, at the close of the main set, just before the 
encore, there were seemingly impromptu covers of "I Can't Give You 
Anything But Love, Baby" and "Tears of a Clown" as the members of the 
band were milling around centerstage.

Then she encored solo again, and then seemed either unwilling, or to 
have forgotten how, to leave the stage, so she stood there smoking a 
cigarette & kind of rambling about Bob Dylan (she'd do him without a 
condom) & I couldn't entirely follow what else. People didn't know 
whether to clap or stay quiet, and it was unclear initially whether she 
intended to play more, but then it slowly dawned that she just seemed to 
be doing a little post-show winding down, only onstage instead of off.

Ross

Todd Morman wrote:
> Couldn't make it due to sudden unforseen interruption.
> 
> todd wah morman
> -- ch-scene: the list that mirrors alt.music.chapel-hill --
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/ch-scene
> 
> 



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