Concert Review: The Magic Band
Well f
uck me, I went to the greatest concert I've ever attended on Sunday the 6th. But I think I'll start from the beginning, in more of the standard journal format.
I found out about the concert in late March. I bought the tickets (25 dollars) almost immediately and simmered in anticipation for a couple of weeks waiting to see The Magic Band. The guy who told me about it was my friend Stryder, who is my best friend and also the other member of my group Wolves In Sheepskin. So we were going to the show together and also planned a little jam sesh beforehand.
Stryder came an hour earlier than expected on the 6th, which isn't a complaint on my part because I missed the f
ucker (he's still living in San Diego while I'm attending school upstate). Oh look at this, Stryder didn't just bring instruments, he brought party supplies! He had a fourth of some bomb ganja, a fifth of Maker's Mark, and a large pack of M&Ms. I only include this detail because that day, I went to the grocery store on a whim and bought some coke and a few Trader Joes chocolate bars. Well this was obviously meant to be, coke and whiskey, choc and choc? Plus some good ole THC to make this realization all the more mindblowing.
So we pull a little smokage and then go and eat some lunch at the caf. Damn, this is probably the most bomb reefer I'd ever had, but that could be because I hadn't smoked in a couple of weeks. However, at one point Stryder asked me "really dank right? Some of the best ganja I've ever had right here." For those interested, this was some outdoor grown Trainwreck Kush from Northern California. For those who don't know much about the pot culture, Northern Califronia is the fu
cking place to be (barring Hawaii) for bud. Also, Trainwreck and anything including the old "Kush" moniker (Master Kush, Orange Kush, etc.). Let me tell you, as an avid THC fan, this really put me in my place.
After some awful food that was damn delicious at the hands of my new idol Trainwreck Kush, me and Stryder head back to my dorm and do a little jamming. We threw down some seriously great recordings where I was on guitar, then drums and Stryder was on guitar, acoustic then electric. WISK fans can expect these recordings to show up on an album in the future (we've got a few other tracks on the album called "How Your Mother Cried Last Night" or "When Cold Stuff Feels Wet". Those are the albums we already have some primer tracks for, but we'ven't really discussed which we'll put it on, but expect it in the next couple of months. One track sounds like a lost track from a Han Bennink and Derek Bailey recording session.
So after the jam session and recording we head down to LA. Once we get to the line we have to wait for a half hour for the venue to open up, during which we met some pretty cool people. These guys came up to us saying "you look like you're having too much fun", which we were because we were quite blitzed at that point. Some people told me I have a familiar face also, but I didn't recognize them. Is WISK more famous than I thought? Do they recognize me from MB or something like that? I'm not sure. My social skills were kind of impaired by the party favours.
Finally we went into the venue after standing in line until 15 minutes after the opening time. We experience a short wait until the opening band Jeffertiti's Nile came on. They were decent; did mostly original tracks aside from a cover of Zig Zag Wanderer in favour of The Magic Band. I've listened to a few of their tracks and they did a spot on job, don't get me wrong. Unfortunately, their music has to much of a pseudo-punk edge for me. There were some rather psychedelic interludes where the guitarist made use of his damn sexy pedalboard and there was a multi-instrumentalist who joined in with some really good flute playing for those parts. It would have been more fitting for the show if they went on to the psychedelic direction more. But I wasn't here to see Jeffertiti's Nile, I came to see The Magic Band; so I breathed a sigh of excited relief when the opening act fled the stage.
Here they come. Rockette Morton picks up his five string bass, Feelers Rebo paces across the stage, Andrew Niven takes his place at the kit, Eric Klerks grabs his guitar nearby Rockette Morton, and last but most definitely not least (if anything the opposite!), John "Drumbo" French grabs the mic. The only people who haven't performed in the Magic Band with the big Beef are Andrew Niven and Erik Klerks. Rockette Morton played on TMR and several other albums, Feelers Rebo playe on Bat Chain Puller (also on the original release which is preceded by Shiny Beast, parenthetically. The original recordings were released by the Zappa Family Trust in 2012). The standard "how're you doing LA!?" is proffered before the band breaks into "My Human Gets Me Blues".
Good god, they're nailing it. I almost want to cry tears of joy as they nail bit after bit of one of my favourite Beefheart (and overall, those of you who know me know how special this music is to me) tracks. After the deliver the cacophony with astounding precision, John French asks the crowd if anybody had never heard the music of Captain Beefheart before, because it's rather an acquired taste (ahem, Trollheart). Nobody fessed up, so I assume that I was among a crowd of other die hard Beefheart fans, which my conversations with fellow attendees also suggested. The group starts playing "Lo Yo Stuff" off of Clear Spot. After all of this Rockette Morton breaks into a fantastic bass solo, and he really gets the crowd going there.
From there on, it gets a little bit fuzzy the exact order because you know, drugs, but after some deliberation after the show, me and my gig mate wrote up the songs that they did. From here on it'll be a track by track review.
Hair Pie: Bake One
Holy sh
it! They're really doing this one! French takes up the soprano sax and plays some rather precise noodliness while the group nails the original plan. Damn I still can't believe they did this one of all tracks. I figured they would have done the easier tracks off of Safe As Milk but hell no! These men are here to entertain, and they know anyone who'd pay to get into a show of theirs wants to hear some TMR material or else!
Golden Birdies
French joins in the group on the sax for a visitation to the theme from Golden Birdies as well as The Clouds Are Full of Wine (Not Whiskey Or Rye) theme. For those who don't know, The Clouds are Full of Wine starts off with a xylophone and guitar doing the theme. Man they did so well with it I can't even put it into words. After a couple minutes of playing on that theme they break into Golden Birdies, which (you can guess what I'm going to say now) they entirely nailed. At the end, French chanted "and the pantaloon duck, white goose neck, quacked" at which point he pointed the mic to the crowd. The ENTIRE crowd shouted back "webcore, webcore". I knew I was among friends at this point.
Hot Head
Really glad they did a track from Doc at the Radar Station. They threw this one on perfectly. I'm going to stop saying that because they did justice to every track that they played. At one point French joined in on the toms while Niven was playing.
Doctor Dark
And they even did a track from Lick My Decals, my favourite nonetheless. Frenchie was on vocals and did it quite well.
Circumstances
This performance made me revisit Clear Spot because it was quite a rocking track. Clear Spot is my favourite of Beefheart's "conventional" era, but since it's from that time period, I don't listen to it that much. Duly fixed.
Diddy Wah Diddy
A throw back to way back when to Beefheart's first EP. Did a fantastic job with it as usual. The crowd was not as enthusiastic about this one, but it was still a good one.
Click Clack
Now on this one, the group really brought the energy because they were clearly feeling it off of the audience. Fantastic rendition.
Floppy Boot Stomp
Probably my favourite song about a fight between a bum, a farmer, and his fiddle. The ****ing best right here. The group threw in some extra interludes not in the original track.
Moonlight On Vermont
Ah yes, good old Moonlight. How could they go wrong with this classic? An impossible task that they proved to be even more impractical. These are the original members and hardcore devotees, could you imagine them doing disgrace to this track?
Big Eyed Beans From Venus
A great track that the group did fantastically. French threw in some saxonizations on this one and it worked so well.
French Plays a Dank Solo
John French tells the crowd "well my original name in The Magic Band was 'Drumbo', and I'm going back to my roots." After which he hops on the drums and plays a mindblowing drum solo. Neil Peart, you can take a seat and learn from the master.
When It Blows It Stacks
A good track off of The Spotlight Kid that the band did well with. They brought the energy with this one. Since it had such good bass on it, someone in the crowd shouted out "What do you run on, Rockette Morton?". It was great.
On Tomorrow
John French went onto the intro to this after his great solo, and the band nailed it. This was something of an extended version of this track as the band went into more of a jammy mode. I came into this expecting some Safe As Milk tracks and though I was surprised by the ones I was given, I was not disappointed in the slightest by the performances.
Big Black Baby Shoes
You can probably guess what I'm going to say now. What a great performance, it was quite stunning.
Suction Prints
French ran off backstage while the rest of the band went on to play this track sans the reeds. These people clearly live and breathe this music like I do, as they did an incredible job with it (fuc
k, okay I'll stop saying that now.
She's Too Much for My Mirror
This one was the last track that they did, and damn it was great. Got the crowd pumped on this one, and they got the unsynchronized synchronizations down pat. Fu
cking impeccable.
B-Side Track? Medley?
They didn't end on this track, but I don't know which one it was! I didn't recognize it, even though traces of Beefheart can be found in my blood, hair, and urine. It was pretty good, I'm pretty sure it was a medley of sorts because there were parts where I felt like I knew what they were playing but then they'd jump onto the next part and I'd be lost again. It was a good track, but Erik Klerks played a long solo towards the end of the track that started off really good and beefy but sort of fell of into bland-land. Whatever, enough redeeming tracks to make up for that moment.
Encore:
Electricity
After the group exited the stage, the audience applauded with great enthusiasm for about five minutes until the band returned to their instruments. French told the crowd that they didn't usually do encores, but how could they say no to that? Whether he was full of sh
it I don't know, but it made this track all the better. Elec-fuc
king-tricity. They really nailed...I said I wasn't going to say that anymore, sorry, but it's so true. They went into a little improvisation in the middle that was really sick (plus their eyes were a little bit redder than before they left the stage, nomsayin). Fantastic track and performance.
Encore Two:
Orange Claw Fucking Hammer
Another couple of minutes of applause and shouts for more go by before John French comes back out alone. What's he going to do? Apes-Ma? Well? The Dust Blows Forward 'N' The Dust Blows Back? Oh sh
it, is he going to do Orange Claw F
ucking Hammer!? Goddamn, he's doing Orange Claw Hammer. This is one of my favourite Beefheart tracks, and by now I hope you've picked up how big of a fan of his I am. I really didn't think they were going to do any of the a capella pieces, but damn, French really delivered on this one. No flubs here (not even a "lic-lic-licorice twisted around" like the Captain did) and it was a very emotionally powerful performance. This was the most perfect and poignant way they could have ended the show.
Whenever French brandished the sax, I was dying in anticipation that they would break into "When Big Joan Sets Up". I was also hoping for some Ice Cream For Crow Material, as well as the irreplaceable "Frownland". But it's no problem that they didn't do these tracks. This was hands down the best concert that I'd ever been to. After the show, me and my gig-mate just sort of looked at each other in understanding. Even though I just tried to do so, words cannot tell how incredible this show was.
Another art piece for you guys, this time by the Big Beef himself. It's called Making Love to a Vampire With a Monkey On My Knee, after (possibly) the track off of Doc at the Radar Station.
