Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Cat's Cradle Part II - I just had to add this latest find



Oh my god, have a look at this review of last night's show:

"Saw the legendary Adrian Belew at the Cat’s Cradle last night. Wow. Amazing. I’d only seen him live playing acoustic, until last night, so I had no idea how loud and ferocious he was when plugged-in. Yow. I was directly in front of him, enjoying the full skreiking joy of his 4 amps. The ear plugs went in about 2/3s through.

He had a drummer, Eric Slick, and bass player, Julie Slick, with him. They were absolutely amazing. Eric Slick is probably the best drummer I’ve seen live, and he’s only recently turned 20. Simply overflowing with apparently effortless power and precision. Julie Slick, his 21-year-old sister, is a monster bass player; she stands there, baby-faced and barefoot in her blue dress, happily playing parts written by bass giants like Les Claypool and Tony Levin - even duplicating, on her bass, much of Levin’s Stick work on Crimson’s “Elephant Talk”
. You’d expect them to be good, to play with someone like Belew (who’s pushing 60), but they were gooood - I’ll be surprised if they don’t end up huge, someday.

They did a lot of long, crazy instrumentals that ended up with the three of them breaking off into different rhythms: very free, but engaging, and never sloppy - when the drummer hit that snare, they were always right back where they needed to be. They did a bunch of new stuff from Sides 1,2&3, a handful of Belew classics (Big Electric Cat, Young Lions, Paint The Road, etc), and a bunch of King Crimson songs at the end (Three Of A Perfect Pair, Thela Hun Ginjeet, Frame By Frame, Elephant Talk). All were great. The guy next to me, who said he’s seen Belew “30 or 40 times”, says Belew’s next record, “Side 4″, will be a live record from this tour - yay! While I like his records just fine, it all sounded amazing when played by this band. Should be great.

I was half expecting him to do a bunch of tame versions of his serious, messagey, songs (Men In Helicopters, Peace On Earth, Lone Rhinoceros, etc), but it was nothing like that at all - no acoustics, none of his Beatle-esque songs. Except for a solo atmospheric instrumental piece Belew did in the middle, it was all heavy aggressive screaming progressive rawk. And it was all surprisingly modern; except for the fact that the crowd was chock-full of balding pot-bellied Boomers, you wouldn’t think this stuff was coming from a guy whose best-known work was done in the early 80s. As far as I can tell, there’s no good reason this particular band he’s put together shouldn’t be a giant in the current alt-rock scene."


Later,I'm sure
xo

2 comments:

  1. Just wanted to say hi. I got here from Youtube, unusual in that I was talking to Eric in the same spot where, nine years ago, I was tossed out after Eddie Vedder bought me a beer. Small world!

    The show was amazing. Julie shot Eric a few amused, incredulous big sister looks: he mouths "five" -- now? you can't be serio -- CRASH! CRASH! CRASH! CRASH! CRASH! -- and they're somewhere else. The snare gets an in-flight tune-up. A cymbal limps over: to ratchet the thing back up calls for another free hand so, shrug, it'll wait.

    Adrian, as ever, is having the time of his life.

    Can't wait for the CGT tour.

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  2. Anonymous9:59 PM

    FYI, i put up a couple of other shots, including one of E&J&A taking their bow that you might like.

    here.

    ReplyDelete