The Good, The Bad & The Queen at the Montreux Jazz Festival
I love live music and since I couldn’t be at one of yesterday’s main events (those being the Live Earth concerts), I figured I might as well go to the renowned Montreux Jazz Festival. More of a series of concerts over 2 weeks than a traditional festival, the event now features as many or more acts from different genres as it does jazz.
I went to see the Good, the Bad & the Queen last night at Miles Davis Hall and had a great time. This is the latest side project from Blur frontman and Gorillaz mastermind Damon Albarn and features the Verve guitarist Simon Tong, Afrobeat pioneer Tony Allen and Clash bassist Paul Simonon (flanking Albarn – center – from left to right in the below photo). The album was produced by DJ Danger Mouse (of Gnarls Barkley and the Grey Album fame), though he wasn’t present at the performance.
The opening act was a Swedish band called Herman Düne who sang shiny 70s-style folk songs with long hair, beards, and vests to match. They were actually terrific, though, and seemed to have a great deadpan sense of humor. (Statements like, “We are very happy to be here... I think they have more than just jazz here now... But it seems pretty jazzy to us” abounded)
After they had finished and the stage was reset, the G,B&Q took the stage, repleat with a 4-person string section (reminscent of the Gnarls Barkley tour, come to think of it). Albarn donned a tophat and the game was on. They tore through their entire album and added an instrumental jam or two to the set as well. Simonon brandished his bass like a tommy gun and electrified the room—the most memorable bass I’ve ever experienced at a show. Allen’s percussion and Tong’s atmospheric guitar were likewise stellar and Albarn’s turns behind the piano were welcome. The Jazz Festival is quite a production: there were at least 3, perhaps 4, cameramen videoing they show the whole time and glancing up at the screens every once in awhile made me think of an old line from Futurama, something like: “This is HD; the resolution is better than real life.” Even though I was quite close to the stage, the video screens somehow portrayed a more visceral experience than what I saw with my own eyes. Weird.
With only one album to their credit, the “idea” (Alburn has repeatedly said they’re “not a band”) played for a solid hour, but the quality of the performance made it seem twice that. Worth the price and then some!
I went to see the Good, the Bad & the Queen last night at Miles Davis Hall and had a great time. This is the latest side project from Blur frontman and Gorillaz mastermind Damon Albarn and features the Verve guitarist Simon Tong, Afrobeat pioneer Tony Allen and Clash bassist Paul Simonon (flanking Albarn – center – from left to right in the below photo). The album was produced by DJ Danger Mouse (of Gnarls Barkley and the Grey Album fame), though he wasn’t present at the performance.
The opening act was a Swedish band called Herman Düne who sang shiny 70s-style folk songs with long hair, beards, and vests to match. They were actually terrific, though, and seemed to have a great deadpan sense of humor. (Statements like, “We are very happy to be here... I think they have more than just jazz here now... But it seems pretty jazzy to us” abounded)
After they had finished and the stage was reset, the G,B&Q took the stage, repleat with a 4-person string section (reminscent of the Gnarls Barkley tour, come to think of it). Albarn donned a tophat and the game was on. They tore through their entire album and added an instrumental jam or two to the set as well. Simonon brandished his bass like a tommy gun and electrified the room—the most memorable bass I’ve ever experienced at a show. Allen’s percussion and Tong’s atmospheric guitar were likewise stellar and Albarn’s turns behind the piano were welcome. The Jazz Festival is quite a production: there were at least 3, perhaps 4, cameramen videoing they show the whole time and glancing up at the screens every once in awhile made me think of an old line from Futurama, something like: “This is HD; the resolution is better than real life.” Even though I was quite close to the stage, the video screens somehow portrayed a more visceral experience than what I saw with my own eyes. Weird.
With only one album to their credit, the “idea” (Alburn has repeatedly said they’re “not a band”) played for a solid hour, but the quality of the performance made it seem twice that. Worth the price and then some!
Labels: Damon Albarn, Montreux, music
posted by Aaron at 3:04 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home