January 14, 2008

Our friend and oft-contributor Neddy celebrated his birthday at Sullivan Hall on Thursday night with good friends and great music, and he’s lived to tell…

If you sit down at a blank canvas and paint everything but a bowl full of fruit, fill in the spaces around the still life but never the apples and oranges themselves…well in some way, then, you in fact have painted those things at the same time you were doing the opposite. Confusing, sure, but that’s was the way I was hearing things Thursday night back at Sullivan Hall.

All Photos by Greg Aiello

Marco Benevento & Friends (two different friends than the previous Thursday) worked in some weird inverted musical space, managing their way around songs and styles and themes, and in the process ended up revealing those things…and a bit more. Which is all a fancy way of saying that the show was next-level sickness. In fact, I’ve seen Benevento play at least 12 times in wildly varying formats over the past 15 months, and Thursday night may have been the most exciting, invigorating and mind-bending of them all.

With Brad Barr on guitar and Duo partner Joe Russo on drums, Marco traced around some of the best music you’ll ever hear. The show was an inverted form of the 1st night of the five-show residency, which was wildly free-form beeps and whirrs that occasionally found its click-point and grooved a bit. This time the band would find its whacked-out-willie weirdness but would always settle back down into some seriously jamming, major-key, all-accessible ass-kicking. Read on…

Take a bunch of rabid music fans, throw them on a luxury cruiseliner, sail ’em out to the jurisdiction-less “international waters” and pack the boat with about 30 bands and individual musicians — now I don’t usually recommend beating yourself about the face, neck, chest, breast and head, but if you can’t have fun on that five-day excursion, you might as well begin knocking yourself unconscious.

And such is Jam Cruise, the weeklong vacation-slash-concert now in its sixth year. The MSC Lirica departed from Ft. Lauderdale on January 4th and docked in Honduras and Cozumel along the way; and, in between, the boat played host to countless concerts, sit-ins, super-jams and seafaring spunions. The artist list featured notables like Warren Haynes and moe.’s Al Schnier, Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, the Funky Meters and Toots & the Maytals, Galactic and Soulive, Perpetual Groove and New Monsoon, Michael Franti & Spearhead, Karl Denson, Robert Walter, Steve Kimock, Grace Potter & the Nocturnals, Lotus and more.

Oh, and hey, that guy in the green shirt at the kit looks familiar. I doubt anyone chatted up Jon Fishman (of the Johnny B. Fishman Jazz Ensemble, I’m told) at the pool that week. So take a trip with us as we look back at Jam Cruise 6, told through the photographic stylings of the gifted and talented Dave Vann. Read on after the jump for a full gallery, as well as videos and downloads from the boat…

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure to catch a rare one-off performance by the Christian McBride Band at the Miller Theater at Columbia University. The night opened with

If you’re like me and biffed the onsale for Steven Malkmus’s previously announced NYC gigs at Bowery Ballroom and the Music Hall of Williamsburg, you’ll get one more chance later today. Tickets go on sale at noon for Malkmus and The Jicks’ newly added April Fools’ Day concert at the Bowery Ballroom. Malkmus hits many other big markets in the Midwest, Southeast and Northeast for his two-week jaunt supporting the March 4th release of Real Emotional Trash.

Let’s kill some time until those ducats go on sale by indulging in some linkage:

• Live Nation finally admits they will take on Ticketmaster, starting in 2009
• Jane’s Addiction looks to release a box set of video and rarities this year
• Record label woes continue: EMI plans to lay off up to 2,000 workers
• Phish keyboardist Page McConnell sits down with ABC’s Nightline to discuss some of his influences and favorite songs
• KyndMusic discovers Scarecrow Collection’s Radio Frequency Disaster
• Herbie Hancock, Stevie Wonder and Quincy Jones led a star-studded tribute to late pianist Oscar Peterson
• Engagdet shares a video of Gibson’s Robot Guitar from the CES
• Bruce Hornsby and Ricky Skaggs are hitting the road again in March
• Neddy runs down the shows of the week in New York City

Finally, a group of Zappa fans have teamed up to write a petition asking the Zappa Family Trust to stop threatening fan sites and tribute bands with litigation. For more about Gail Zappa’s evil ways, read MP3 Boot Camp: Zappa Sues ’em All [via Here Comes The Flood]