As the stakes have gradually risen, and potentially reached a boiling point on a west-coast tour with the Benevento/Russo Duo, the group surprised many members within its camp by deciding to take time off from the road, and indulge in some hard-earned down-time.
I can’t say I’ve ever been a big fan of the self-aggrandizing weekly recap most bloggers enjoy, but considering we’ve published 70 posts on this here rag in less than
Sports fans around the country were saddened to learn that former Michigan head coach and athletic director Bo Schembechler had died at the age of 77. Perhaps the group of
My good friend Russ Kahn — better known in some circles as the entreprenurial young man that created the “101 Songs” Phish poster — took his sweet-ass time posting his usual encyclopedic concert and/or festival summary. But good
You can breathe again, it’s Friday. While you get your plans together for tonight, check out these items from Al Gore’s Interweb: MSG officially announces that it has leased the Beacon Theater,
When Ratatat first popped up a few years ago, their intriguing collection of drum beats and spacey guitar work set them apart from most bands. Sure, other instrumentals were eyeing the same avenues, but Ratatat put the mental n instrumental with their border-breaking goldmine of catchy as fuck beats and just plain solid songs.
The Answer are all about classic rock‘n’roll anthems. Led Zeppelin, AC/DC & Thin Lizzy are all glaring apparent influences in their music. With the sudden influx of copyist artists around these days, it would be easy just to dismiss the band as another here today gone tomorrow fad, like our British friends The Darkness.
French rock/electronica duo Air will release its next album, "Pocket Symphony," March 6 via Astralwerks. The 12-track set boasts vocals from Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker and the Divine Comedy’s Neil Hannon,
It’s become moderately fashionable to over-appreciate and impersonate the genius of Michael McDonald. After living in the wayback of the public consciousness for the better part of two decades, the
Marco Benevento knows his math. The bearded hipster pianist wisely chose to set up a regular Wednesday residency at Tonic on Manhattan’s Lower East Side in November, which fortunately for all of us, has five Wednesdays. As Cosby would say, that’s “One, two, three, four, fiiiiive Marco Wednesdays.” Bonus.
Last night’s over-before-it-started, 70-minute show marked the middle gig of Marco’s Novemberstand, a (mostly) solo performance full of experimental covers and spacey loops. Somehow he ended up with more equipment on stage than most full bands, but like a musical polygamist, I’m pretty sure he spent a little time with every one of them: the grand piano, the electric piano, the tiny keyboard, toy circuits, drum pad, you name it. Still, the per instrument set-up to play-time ratio couldn’t have been lower than 5:1. I made that up, but it sounded good.
Marco began with Randy Pink Floyd’s Fearless, then followed that stellar beginning with terrifically tickled homages to Thelonius Monk (Bye-Ya), Leonard Cohen (Seems So Long Ago, Nancy) and Radiohead. He even played a lesser known Duo tune off Best Reason To Buy The Sun, Welcome Red, before saying something like “Joe [Russo] is gonna kill me for playing that.” But if a recording of this show ever surfaces, that Monk tune — a grand piano jazz performance devoid of all his typical layers of sound — floored me more than any of his other inventiveness.
Marco eventually called up to the stage his occasional collaborator and preferred rock shredder Scott Metzger for three songs near the end of his set. The lowercase duo kicked it off with a Combustible Edison tune, hightailed it into the capitalized Duo’s Abduction Pose and finished it up with a Happy Birthday-infused cover of Ween’s Birthday Boy (read on below for a couple of videos I shot of these last two). As much as I loved the solo stuff, Metzger took the night’s proceedings to a higher level, his understated-ness notwithstanding.
You’ve got two more chances to see Marco & Friends down at Tonic this month. Next Wednesday features the keyboardist with three drummers — Sir Joe Russo, Bobby Previte and Mike Dillon (and where there’s a Mike D there’s usually a Skerik, but…). Make it your beeswax to get down there and see what unfolds…
