The program of Den Atelier continues to be the best around Luxembourg, this time inviting bassist Richard Bona. Yesterday night he delivered, again, an intense set full of sounds from Cuba, India, Cameroon, and even a special “Luxembourg tune parody”. Loved it.

Below is a cover from Jaco Pastorius he often plays live, Liberty City. I’m experimenting with ways to get a better sound off my iPhone so please bear with the sound…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Richard Bona

He will be playing in Paris at the Batacan, November 21th ;-)

I lost count but it was my 9th or 10th Maceo concert. Incredible how the energy is still there, plus one of the best sounds I’ve ever heard at his gigs.

A few videos and pictures I shot during the concert. Sound is bad but you get the emotion :

Maceo solo with drums only

Click here to view the embedded video.

Bruno Speight (guitar) solo

Click here to view the embedded video.

Martha High (vocals) solo

Click here to view the embedded video.

Final medley

Click here to view the embedded video.

Maceo on the flute

That’s it! Maceo returns in Paris April 1st, 2010. This time I’m planning to invite a bunch of friends ;-) We’re gonna have a funky good time!

]]> http://sylvainzimmer.com/2009/10/23/maceo-parker-nancy-jazz-pulsations-20091009/feed/ 0 http://sylvainzimmer.com/2009/10/04/nosfell-03102009/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=nosfell-03102009 http://sylvainzimmer.com/2009/10/04/nosfell-03102009/#comments Sun, 04 Oct 2009 12:54:51 +0000 sylvain http://www.sylvainzimmer.com/?p=162

Nosfell is a very talented french artist. Concert last night in Fresnes (south of Paris) was full of energy and weirdness, recommended for those who like musical experimentation ;-)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Another one, less experimental, cello + guitar :

Click here to view the embedded video.

Bassist virtuoso T.M. Stevens with The Headhunters, from where I was standing ;-)

One more concert I’ll never forget. Even one year later I still consider it as being the best I’ve ever been to so far. And I go to a lot of them ;-)

So the setup was like this: Closing concert of Nancy Jazz Pulsations 2007, a festival I’ve been going to each October for 5 to 6 years. Elaine was in Australia at this time so, as often, I went there with my mom, to thank her again for driving me there in the first place when I hadn’t my license yet. But anyway.

First acts were Disfonction, a french powerfunk band, then Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, which I didn’t really like: there was too much talk and show, not enough funk. Then Fred Wesley and his band which I had seen a few days before in Grenoble. I could follow these guys for weeks, really ;-)

And then… Then! They came on stage. They being original Headhunters Mike Clarke (drums) and Bill Summers (percussion), Mark Shim on saxophone, Jerry Z on keyboards (taking the place of legend Herbie Hancock!) and last but not least, the great T.M. Stevens on bass guitar.

In order to bring everybody up to date, The Headhunders is a legendary band created by Herbie Hancock in the 70s, authors of jazz-funk-fusion hits like Chameleon, Watermelon Man, and others.

So they were there, 40m from me (we sat during the break), I must say I hadn’t big expectations and wasn’t a hardcore fan before they started playing. So it wasn’t a celebrity crush or something, I think it’s really, really about the music. Anyway, they began playing and soon I was wondering “Fuck, is this an UFO or a bassist?”. So I rushed to the front row to see check them out closer, in front of the bassist of course.

And man I wasn’t dissapointed. What followed was 1h30 of pure extasy, or an uninterrupted series of musical orgasms if you will.

This a glimpse of the madness, maybe the worst youtube video you can find, with poor image and even unsynced audio, but you may get the point :

Click here to view the embedded video.

So, T.M. Stevens is a crazy person. Well, at least a crazy bassist, but I suspect he also may be a bit different from us because you can’t just do that kind of bass playing if you’re a regular guy. Of course I hope to be able to funk like that some day but let’s get real, it’s a way of life. Just look at the man:

I like the fact that he is crazy, actually. That’s how funk should be. As he said to one of the members of his forum:

Hannah, just keep on playing that bass, then one day it will start playing you, and that’s when the magic happens..

Well, I like that very much. At this level, you don’t play funk. Funk plays you. (Russian Reversal ?)

I think that’s part of what I want to accomplish in my life. Be inhabited by such craziness and happiness while playing. Share it to others. And it may sound lame but going to this concert and realizing this may well change how I want to spend the rest of my days down there.

Isn’t that a mind-blowing concert ? ;)

Anyway, besides that bassist, every member of the band was awesome. Mark Shim delivered consistently good sax solos, generally quite good funk, more fusion/experimental in Sly which I highly appreciated given the general feeling of that song. Saxophone was my first instrument so I’m always loaded with really high expectations but I couldn’t help recognizing he had succeeded in this difficult challenge of musicianship.

Another one who faced quite a challenge was of course pianist Jerry Z from New York, who was replacing Herbie Hancock for this tour. Well, he pulled it off. Excellent support for the rest of the band, impressive solist, seemed to have a lot of fun, I had rarely seen such a mastership of the Rhodes.

Then of course old men Mike Clarke and Bill Summers with his legendary introduction to Watermelon Man. I knew the song before seeing them live but I didn’t know that he actually uses a real glass bottle to play the intro. Video of that below :

Click here to view the embedded video.

So back to the band, I recently bought the live CD of this tour which I highly recommend. Yes that’s right I bought a physical CD, I did this maybe twice in my life and it might well be the last but it was worth every penny. I’d say the energy of the show I saw is 90% there, which is better than most live recordings you can get.

I’ll see you Headhunters in your next tour, that’s for sure! T.M. Stevens might not join them again, he was really stealing the show at some points – to my great pleasure – but they may want to go back to something closer to the original Headhunters, I don’t know. It will just make this concert even more unique ;)

So that’s it, a big blog post for my best concert yet, and a last poorly recorded video to finish in music:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Last March, Elaine and me spent one week travelling in New Zealand, one of the most beautiful roadtrips we’ve ever made. One surprise I had kept to her was that our stop in Christchurch included a Maceo Parker concert ;-)

Everybody was seated and the seats were numbered, which kind of sucked but we were lucky enough to be on the third row, right in front of the subs… I have been to a lot of Maceo concerts (7 or 8 !!) and this one had one of the best sounds. Each slap of Rodney Skeet Curtis was literally shaking us from head to toe, and by the middle of the concert most of the people were off their seats dancing ;-)

Maceo’s son Corey Parker was there and he delivered an excellent solo, maybe more rap than funk but the mix was welcome anyway. Martha High also made her “ladies in the house???” show as always ;-)

All in all, one of the best Maceo gigs I’ve seen (yet!)

Funk Legend Fred Wesley and Me!

A year ago I helped my good friends at Rocktambule organize a Fred Wesley concert (official photos), it was an outstanding evening, and I had the time to spend some quality time with Fred and his fellow musicians.

Best song of the night for me was “Gimme some more”, sounded quite different than Maceo but definitely more laid-back and groovy. Another good memory was chatting with australian pianist Barney McAll and the big black bassist backstage about the life of a travelling funk orchestra ;-)

Seems like no week passes without a new concert appearing on my google calendar ;-)

• Maceo Parker with the WDR Big Band, in Dudelange (July 14th) : A really different performance from Maceo, with a tribute to Ray Charles. As always, it was a blast. Bassist Rodney ‘Skeet’ Curtis lays down basslines like nobody else and the Big Band was one of the best I’ve seen.
• Goldfrapp tonight at the Neumunster Abbey : We bought our tickets yesterday even if we don’t know Goldfrapp very well, mostly because the venue is nothing short of amazing! Check it out…
• The Mars Volta, 3 hours of show at the Atelier, next Sunday : will we survive more than one ? ;-)

I’ve planned 3 concerts for my 2 weeks in France this May:

• Maceo Parker in Kaiserslautern (Germany), May 2. When seeing him in New Zealand a few weeks ago I promised myself I’d invite all my family when he comes near France again because I wanted them to see a P-Funk concert at least once in their lifetime… So I took 7 of them to Kaiserslautern! The show was really awesome and their concensus was that the trombone player is really cute. I guess ;-)
• Morcheeba tonight @ the Atelier, Luxembourg city. I’m still not sure I’m a fan of Mocheeba but I hope I’ll make my mind tonight ;-) I just learned they changed their main singer 2 times in the past few years so maybe it won’t be the same as before. Anyway…
• California Guitar Trio with Tony Levin @ New Morning, Paris, May 14: Not sure either about the guitar trio but any side project of bass guru Tony Levin is of interest!

So that’s a pretty good program before flying back to Australia on the 15th! No Jamendo artists in there but hopefully I’ll go to their gigs regularly next year in Paris.

I just received my first issue of Wired. I read the first articles yesterday, one of them explaining what’s a “narcipost”… It’s a completely narcissistic post on someone’s blog.

I love being a narcissistic early adopter so here’s mine.. what my own small life has been in the past few days….

First we sucessfully went through the first jamendo live (more on it later I guess). Pretty exhausting, so I missed a couple of exams but it doesn’t really matter as usual. Troubled times … Then what else… Great saturday evening with my girlfriend… nobody cares (maybe she does though)… What could be even less interesting for you guest than this…. I _loved_ Lost 1×19. One of my� fingers is wounded so I experience hard times playing bass….

Speaking of bass, and still narcissistically (what a strange word), I just went back from my bass lesson. Today I worked with my awesome teacher Vincent (who’s made a couple basses for Marcus Miller among other things… he plays very, very well and is usually able to bear me :) on a bass solo for my first album !! If you expect slap stuff you’ll be deceived … It’s at the end of what is currently only a piano thing, will be ~3 minutes of relaxing melodic solo… can’t wait to record it !!! (maybe I’ll need to finish composing it before though)

I also thought of a photo of my navel to illustrate this narcipost, but I save you that :)