Saturday, April 12, 2014

Bo and Lefty Boogaloo at Cat's Art MusikCircus

It didn't occur to me until after the shows on Thursday that everything in them had been original.  This wasn't at all the first time, tho, as the last time that happened was, well, Tuesday and the time before that was on Monday when Untolerable Bohemian and lefty Unplugged played.




Untolerable Bohemian has been moving very strongly into making his grooves and there is great tripfulness in them as his play is very thoughtful and I frequently get hints of Hendrix in the way he does it.  This is not to say he plays like Hendrix as he does much better and instead thinks like him.  The biggest change this week was that he is bringing his singing into his groove-making and it's a good idea as he has a good voice, he just doesn't want to do the same old stuff with it.

The mushrooms come from Bo's tip jar and that happens every time someone donates some Lindens. Bo said he doesn't tangle with such things anymore but I'm guessing they were in the game at some point.  What I notice is that these mushrooms are Amanita muscaria otherwise known as Alice in Wonderland.  (Alice is for experts.  Don't screw with it.  Get it wrong and you die.)

Now Bo did do a bit of a sample of his version of "Sunny" but, for me, it doesn't blow the idea that the whole show was original as his cover is so many light years from the original that it doesn't even matter anymore.  So Bo keeps making his groove and people continue to be diggin' it.




lefty Unplugged just doesn't do covers that much.  I think he did one in the last month but it was a long time before that for the next one.  He did more at one time but he has shifted his set to his original work and it's exceptional.

"Love Gone Runnin' On Home" is lefty's latest creation and it pleased him as it had been in August that he completed his last one.  Maybe you think that's long but lefty crafts his songs, he doesn't just pop out three chords and call it blues.  The dynamic of a song rises and falls, the chord patterns go through changes as it progresses, and the result is a song that evolves while you listen.  His newest song is a bit looser than that and it's cool to hear as the risk in a high level of crafting is the song can become rigid.  That's why "Stairway to Heaven," "Dust in the Wind," etc are so hated in music stores; they're the same every damn time.

There is no threat of rigidity in lefty's songs as he has the knack of others in the Circus for making his songs always sound like he just wrote them.  Something I'm missing is that sometimes lefty would go off on improvised musical tales and it was clearly something he was inventing as he was going along.  It's a personal preference for that kind of performance but lefty is very good at it and is masterful at using a looper to do it.  I would never suggest abandoning his songs to go all improv but a touch of it once in a while is quite nice.  Those explorations were highly delicious.

In hearing lefty over the microphone, he sounds so laid-back and he is but he performs from a studio that's very high-tech with lots of gadgets and he has stringent standards for audio quality.  You may hear clipping due to an over-driven signal from others but you will hardly ever hear clipping from lefty.  In part the cleanliness comes from accumulating exotic gear over a period of years but accumulating it is all very well, knowing how to really use it is the thing and lefty knows exactly what he's doing, albeit with a tea disaster every so often to show the equipment who is boss.


So there you have Monday.  It was the first day of the week and the whole evening was original.

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