Music Nights

Been go­ing out a bit more than usu­al; four nights of live mu­sic in the last mon­th. The ob­ject of the game here is to con­vince a few more of you to get off the so­fa and go hear peo­ple play. The en­ter­tain­ment was Big Su­gar, Pa­tri­cia Bar­ber, Muse and a car­ol sing. Each was mag­ic.

Big Su­gar · Un­less you’re Cana­di­an you prob­a­bly don’t know about them. They’ve nev­er quite de­cid­ed whether they’re folkies or ras­tas or blues­men; have had a cou­ple of hits over the years, you might have heard Dig­gin a hole.

They were play­ing Vancouver’s Com­modore Ball­room, one of the nicest places any­where to drink and dance and lis­ten. Lots of nice seat­s, huge sprung dance­floor, pret­ty de­cent sound. So the crowd boozed it up and danced fu­ri­ous­ly and had an aw­ful­ly good time. In be­tween the dub-flavored stuff they cov­ered Dear Mr Fan­ta­sy (huh?) and Rollin’ and Tumblin’, lean­ing so far in­to the groove it made my whole body war­m.

Lots of good gui­tar, lots of better-than-good bass, OK singing, sharp dance moves, fun fun fun. We’d had a hard day, were tired, so when they said “…and for our last song”, we start­ed shuf­fling for the ex­it. But stopped. They end­ed, of all things, with a straight al­beit metal­lic take on Oh Cana­da. Huh? The beery au­di­ence ate it up, roar­ing away loud enough to be heard along with the gui­tars. It was im­pos­si­ble not to smile. Live mu­sic, there’s noth­ing like it.

Pa­tri­cia Bar­ber · I had a trav­el rout­ing through Chica­go so ar­ranged to stay over a Mon­day night where, as on most Mon­days, Pa­tri­cia Bar­ber, my per­son­al fa­vorite liv­ing jazzbo, holds court, play­ing two sets for some laugh­ably small cov­er charge. If you get there a lit­tle ear­ly you can sit close enough to spill your drink on the stage.

The venue is the Green Mill Cock­tail Lounge. The name’s a trib­ute to the Moulin Rouge and it’s for­mer­ly Al Capone’s fa­vorite bar. It’s about booze and jaz­z; no food for sale of any kind. It’s hard not to love.

The crowd is ap­par­ent­ly half lo­cal reg­u­lars, half jazz en­thu­si­asts from all over the damn plan­et who can’t be­lieve the in­ti­ma­cy and the price.

Ms Barber’s mu­sic is melod­ic and vir­tu­osic and emo­tion­al, but you need to be com­fy with jazz id­iom­s. I’ve seen lots of dif­fer­ent play­ers with her over the years, all good; these days most­ly young pup­s. Oc­ca­sion­al mu­si­cians like me go weak at the knees over high-level jazz players’ ef­fort­less surf­ing around and through chords and rhythms that we’d have to prac­tice for months to repli­cate.

So on this last oc­ca­sion, a tune I hadn’t heard be­fore touched my heart, seemed to be about “Persephone”. After the first set, I stood up to stretch and, since I was right by the stage, in a break in the band’s con­ver­sa­tion with each oth­er I caught Ms Barber’s eye and said “The song about Perse­phone, that was beau­ti­ful. Is it new?” She beamed at me and said no, that it was years old. I was a lit­tle sur­prised since I have most of her record­s; I said so, and re­peat­ed the com­pli­men­t. Dur­ing the sec­ond set, be­tween songs she said to the band “We got a com­pli­ment on Perse­phone, let’s play it again.” So they did; reached back for more and took it high­er. What a thril­l. On the way out I called out thanks and got a friend­ly wave.

There’s a love­ly Perse­phone on YouTube, but maybe a lit­tle too po­lite and con­trolled, plus Pa­tri­cia doesn’t stretch out on pi­ano. It’s from her 2006 al­bum Mytholo­gies, which I’ve since pur­chased and to­tal­ly rec­om­mend.

Speak­ing of rec­om­men­da­tion­s, here are two more: If you’re go­ing to the Green Mil­l, get there ear­ly, and sit at the bar or in a booth. The plas­tic chairs they put up in front of the stage will give you se­vere back dam­age.

Muse · Ah, a guilty mu­si­cal plea­sure. They’re a pow­er trio and play pow­er pop some­where on the U2-to-Queen ax­is. They have some great songs, sing beau­ti­ful­ly, and the gui­tar or­ches­tra­tion is tremen­dous. There’s noth­ing in­no­va­tive in the slight­est and you re­al­ly don’t want to look too close at the lyrics or sen­ti­ments; just lis­ten to the gui­tar and shake your booty.

I took my whole fam­i­ly, in­clud­ing the nine-year-old and the sixteen-year-old. And what a show! The mas­sive set filled most of the floorspace and airspace in the lo­cal hock­ey rink. The lat­est record is called Drones and sure enough, at the open­ing the air filled with big balloon-drones in a slow or­ches­trat­ed dance. It sort of didn’t work be­cause the song is dystopi­an, but the drones were adorable.

But wow  —  great stag­ing, great light­ing, great vi­su­al­s, great sound, pol­ish pol­ish pol­ish. The mo­ment the band came on stage the au­di­ence leapt to its feet, and then nev­er sat down. There were on­ly a cou­ple of weak songs, and then on the big hit­s, ev­ery­one sang along.

Now… if you’d come look­ing for spon­tane­ity or soul or blues in­flu­ences, you’d come up emp­ty. It was ob­vi­ous that ev­ery move, ev­ery hell-for-leather charge out to the stage’s wings, ev­ery stiff-legged leap, was pre­ci­sion chore­og­ra­phy, prac­ticed heav­i­ly and pulled off ef­fort­less­ly. I re­spect that, a lot; peo­ple who take en­ter­tain­ing oth­er peo­ple se­ri­ous­ly.

By the way, Psy­cho, from the lat­est record Drones, is a ter­rif­ic con­cert open­er, and Dead In­side works well on-stage too. Of the band’s chest­nut­s, Mad­ness is the most fun as a sing-along.

Are they gonna play a song twice be­cause a fan likes it? Are they gonna cov­er Rollin’ and Tumblin’? Are they go­ing to raise your con­scious­ness? None of the above. But it’s got a good beat, you could dance to it, and ev­ery­body did. Both kids had a good time and we all sang along to the hit­s.

I rec­om­mend tak­ing Muse’s tour in. But I al­so rec­om­mend an evening in a good lo­cal rock-&-roll or jazz bar.

Christ­mas sing-along · Fi­nal­ly, just the oth­er night we went along to a car­ol­ing evening fea­tur­ing Sim­ple Gifts, a Van­cou­ver choir; my wife is one of their so­pra­nos. The choir sang a few, then the whole room sang a few, tra­di­tion­al and mod­ern, and there was a food and cloth­ing drive and we raised a whole bunch of mon­ey for char­i­ty, and ev­ery­one had a good time.

They had all the car­ol lyrics print­ed out and let the au­di­ence pick the ones they want­ed to sing. Here’s what’s sur­pris­ing; one of the choic­es was Imag­ine. I wouldn’t call it a car­ol but that didn’t seem to both­er any­one. I’ve nev­er had a chance to sing it, and it turns out to be a lit­tle more com­pli­cat­ed than it sounds on the ra­dio.

Al­so, I sus­pect there are very few mem­bers of my gen­er­a­tion who can sing that song with­out get­ting all choked up. Cer­tain­ly not me.

So get out and in­volve your­self with some mu­sic that’s com­ing from re­al peo­ple in re­al time. Al­so, try be­ing one of those peo­ple.

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