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One december 2nd, Jean-Jacques Milteau is playing with his sould band (aptly named Soul Conversation) at the Théâtre Jean Vilar in Suresnes for what promises to be an excellent night of music. I have decided to attend with wife and kids.
I really need to review JJ's latest CD. It's not entirely new territory, but it is quite different from his recent releases with the possible exception of Memphis. The emphasis really is on the beautiful voices of Michael Robinson and Ron Smyth, and the harmonica becomes a backing instrument with occasional sweet and melodic solos supporting the singing duet. The one thing that struck me upon listening was that JJ has developed a specific vocabulary for his soul playing. He doesn't play exactly like he does on his more bluesy stuff. It's not revolutionary or anything, but the placement, the silences, the lines he plays around the singers, they're all somewhat different. And I like it.
And of course, JJ will be backed by the astoundingly subtle Manu Galvin on guitar, a man whose accompaniments are so perfect and clever that they make my hair rise on my neck everytime. If you don't believe me, check out Ode to Billy Joe on the Acoustic Show.
Anyway, I'll write a more thorough review when time allows, or maybe I'll do a joint review of the CD and the concert.
See you there!
Thanks to all those who emailed me or posted about my iPod woes. I managed to find five minutes to log onto the net in Milan and discovered how you reboot your iPod. It's working fine now, although I'll have a nagging doubt forever... With all the traveling I do in my current job, my iPod really is a vital component of my lifestyle. I currently have 11555 tracks on it, over 100 days of continuous music (all legally purchased, I should add...)
On my way back from Madrid last week, I experienced a novel approach to music. I had found the superb rock magazine MOJO at the newsstand in Madrid, and I started reading it as soon as these pesky Iberia flight attendants allowed me to put the headphones on. The frist big article I read was about Metallica, so I switched the iPod to listening to Ride the Lighting. The album lasted about the same time as the album (MOJO writes hefty articles and interviews). Then I read the article on Leonard Cohen's carrier while listening to Songs from a Room which was also on my iPod, and finally I landed reading the posthumous interview of Pink Floy'd Rick Wright while listening to Atom Heart Mother.
What a cool was to enjoy a music magazine. Needless to say, I didn't read the article on Grace Jones.
A few weeks back, I was lucky enough to attend one of Charlie Hunter's all too rare appearences in Paris, at the Sunset jazz club. I have mixed feelings about the Sunset. It's got a nice atmosphere, it's an old cellar and as such a really great place to listen to jazz, but it's been designed to seat as many people as possible and as such the seating is really literally painful on the ass. After two and a half hours it's virtually unbearable.
But I decided to brave it for the sake of listening (and seeing) Hunter live. And it was worth it. Charlie Hunter is a mix of musical influences, from blues to funk, from Jimmy Smith vamps to Jimi Hendrix bite. But nothing prepared me for such an in your face live sound. And it was way cool after a week of work travelling to be engulfed in slightly too loud for the size of the club groovy music.
Hunter was accompanied by Erik Deutsch on Fender Rhodes (and magic effects box) and Tony Mason on drums. Deutsch is a true wizard of the Rhodes, with groove, ideas and an instinct for interesting effects. It seemed to me that, as he was playing, a part of his brain was always thinking about opportunities for introducing interesting effects. Kind of like live improvisational cooking. Excellent stuff. Mason was really grooving, solid and not too wild, but his few solo spots during the evening displayed a good sense of improvisation without loosing the groove which is really all you want in a drummer!
Watching Hunter himself play is a strange experience at first. In the first few minutes, you want to see his hands creeping up and down the length of his bassitar in a very un-guitarist like fashion, just to try and connect what you hear with what his fingers are doing. But really you can't. Too much happening at the same time. One of the things I really enjoyed was the fact that he sounded much meaner live than he does on record. What really hook me in his recordings is the writing, the groove he lays with the bass and the chording he does around it, but I'm rarely wowed by the solos, mostly because they tend (to my ears), not to sound raw enough. Here he was ripping it, just like a jazz-rock guitarist with a good background in Freddie King would. Except he was playing intricate bass lines at the same time.
The first set was really awesome, with a lot of numbers I recognised from Mistico. It was intense, groovy as all hell and just plain great. In the second set the guys pushed the envelope a little less, playing standards and shuffles over some of the more challenging compositions they'd done in the first set. I really loved their Sunny Side of the Street, but it felt more like a really good jam session...
Still, it was a pretty amazing evening. I'm really glad I changed my plans to fly back from Athens on the morning of that Friday instead of the evening. My only frustration was that they didn't have any copies of the new album Baboon Strength. I has held back from the pre-release offer in the hope of getting one directly from the band. Oh well...
I took some photos, and some of them didn't come out too shabby (if I say so myself), check 'em out!
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