Lefty Unplugged was nothing short of brilliant last night. Last week he began somewhat subdued and then built up the show all the way through to the end but last night was quite a different thing. Lefty started out with an improv that showed all the reasons a looper is almost a new instrument in terms of what it will now permit a musician to do.
Lefty started out playing his guitar to make a sound like falling rain and over this he played a stronger sound as wind calling through the trees. It was a beautiful piece of music and it was all improvisation, something he invented in the moment and which disappeared when he stopped. The transience of that kind of playing gives a musician freedom to let the piece sing in a way that will never happen in recording as there isn't the prison of permanence.
While Lefty's poetry last week had great power, he wasn't playing so demonstratively on the guitar but it was quite a different thing this week. He said after the performance that he is inspired by Cat Boucher and her Art MusikCircus and this is something she has trouble believing as she really doesn't believe she does more than to make the stage available. However, any musician who performs there will disagree with her as there is a quite special magic she brings to everyone. As the musician feels it, this sets him or her free to fly to places they might not otherwise have gone and last night was a beautiful example of that.
Lefty is quite gifted in his poetry and it's amusing to hear him call himself arrogant after playing a piece in which he said he sounded like he was playing for an audience of two hundred thousand, as if he were trippin' on himself as a Woodstock musician. What I was hearing was the inspiration of live in which he let everything in him ring out in his words and his music to bring everything he could to it. That he ridiculed it afterward just showed a charming humility rather than any kind of arrogance.
And of course we danced. The oldest things in humans are our songs and our dances and there is nothing beyond that other than the artificial claptrap of a pseudo-civilization. There are some who claim mental illness is a natural reaction to that crazed civilization but this is just a shallow excuse to allow themselves to be pawns of it and to use that construct to serve their own shallow needs. Only by rising above that can we appreciate the magic that Lefty Unplugged brings through his music and Cat Boucher brings through her work to stage that music.
Mit Licht und Liebe ist der Frieden (With light and love is the peace)
This one was shot just as the show started and before people started arriving. It's like the moment at the start of a party when you worry no-one will come but then people start pouring into it. Lefty doesn't play a conventional performance and it's always a challenge to build an audience for such an act as many people take comfort in the familiar and only want to hear cover songs. This is a frustration for a venue owner who delights in finding the music that is itself a challenge but those who do come to the performance are rewarded with something that is beautiful and they cannot hear anywhere else.
Mit Licht und Liebe!
Friede!
Lefty started out playing his guitar to make a sound like falling rain and over this he played a stronger sound as wind calling through the trees. It was a beautiful piece of music and it was all improvisation, something he invented in the moment and which disappeared when he stopped. The transience of that kind of playing gives a musician freedom to let the piece sing in a way that will never happen in recording as there isn't the prison of permanence.
While Lefty's poetry last week had great power, he wasn't playing so demonstratively on the guitar but it was quite a different thing this week. He said after the performance that he is inspired by Cat Boucher and her Art MusikCircus and this is something she has trouble believing as she really doesn't believe she does more than to make the stage available. However, any musician who performs there will disagree with her as there is a quite special magic she brings to everyone. As the musician feels it, this sets him or her free to fly to places they might not otherwise have gone and last night was a beautiful example of that.
Lefty is quite gifted in his poetry and it's amusing to hear him call himself arrogant after playing a piece in which he said he sounded like he was playing for an audience of two hundred thousand, as if he were trippin' on himself as a Woodstock musician. What I was hearing was the inspiration of live in which he let everything in him ring out in his words and his music to bring everything he could to it. That he ridiculed it afterward just showed a charming humility rather than any kind of arrogance.
And of course we danced. The oldest things in humans are our songs and our dances and there is nothing beyond that other than the artificial claptrap of a pseudo-civilization. There are some who claim mental illness is a natural reaction to that crazed civilization but this is just a shallow excuse to allow themselves to be pawns of it and to use that construct to serve their own shallow needs. Only by rising above that can we appreciate the magic that Lefty Unplugged brings through his music and Cat Boucher brings through her work to stage that music.
Mit Licht und Liebe ist der Frieden (With light and love is the peace)
This one was shot just as the show started and before people started arriving. It's like the moment at the start of a party when you worry no-one will come but then people start pouring into it. Lefty doesn't play a conventional performance and it's always a challenge to build an audience for such an act as many people take comfort in the familiar and only want to hear cover songs. This is a frustration for a venue owner who delights in finding the music that is itself a challenge but those who do come to the performance are rewarded with something that is beautiful and they cannot hear anywhere else.
Mit Licht und Liebe!
Friede!
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