The Blogg

On Tuesday I saw The Deb Callahan Band, a blues quartet (vocals, guitar, bass, drums) from Philadelphia. They were enjoyable, but inferior to the similar Sarah Ayers Band across the board. Afterward was Lil’ Ed & The Blues Imperials from Chicago. Lil’ Ed plays slide guitar and sings, his brother plays bass, and he has a drummer and a second guitarist who also sings lead on a few songs. Lil’ Ed is not quite the vocalist that Frank Bey is, nor can he match the intensity of Tommy Castro’s guitar work. (To be fair, I’ve never been a big fan of slide players.) However, he and his band put on a good, entertaining show. I believe this is the first time I have seen someone seriously playing a bass using only the tip of his thumb to pluck the strings. As befits this suboptimal technique, his playing was adequate but in no way remarkable. After being told they could play one song as an encore, the band decided to play two. In response, the festival cut power to the mains at 11:00 sharp. (When you’ve been successfully running a festival in the middle of a city for 25 years, I guess you have to take your commitments to the city pretty seriously.) The band kept playing, and you can hear just the sound of the monitors and amplifiers on stage for part of the last song.

I had a ticket to see Earth, Wind, & Fire on Wednesday night. On Tuesday afternoon I had the following conversation with my wife. Rachel: “Do you need this receipt for your Boston tickets?” Me: “No” Shredder: “Whirr Crunch Grind” Me: “… but I do not my ticket for tomorrow night” Rachel: “Your what?” Fortunately, the actual receipt remained intact, and for a $5 reprinting fee the box office was willing to replace my ticket. Quite a generous policy, since I could have just given it to someone else.

This time I arrived plenty early and got a spot at the very front of the plebe section, in hopes that I would be better able to hear the band over the excitement of the crowd. For a while that worked, but about a half hour in a very intoxicated, very loud woman moved up beside me. She proceeded to talk, yell, and whistle her way through the concert. It would have been bad enough if she was someone dragged along by a friend, but she seemed to know the lyrics to every song. If it was not quite clear enough how much of a jerk she was, for the encore her party decoupled the barrier separating our section from the more expensive seats closer to stage and ran through. As I was leaving the show I was amazed by the volume of litter people left behind; the entire field was covered in trash. Not a good night for my opinion of humanity.

Fortunately, the concert itself was quite good. The band is still very tight and Philip Bailey’s voice is simply extraordinary. What impressed me most about the show is that they really stretched out. I would estimate that at least a third of the concert was, or at least appeared to be, improvisational solos. There are not many headlining bands that would have the nerve to do that, nor many audiences that would put up with it. Of course, they also played through all of the hits that I wanted to hear, including “Shining Star”, “In The Stone”, “September”, and “After The Love Is Gone”.

My Thursday evening started at Americaplatz with Last Waltz Ensemble, a tribute to Bob Dylan & The Band. If I am going to listen to this music I would rather that Dylan were singing it, but they also did a good show. Next up was Ryan Shaw, a powerful young soul singer with a rocking band. I try to avoid watching American Idol at any cost, but I think this guy would fit right in there. His guitarist supported the melody well without getting in the way and impressed when featured. His bassist was truly exceptional, adding a very funky undertone to the music and playing a solo that could be “Portrait Of Tracy” for a new generation.

On Friday I saw Fusion Jazz Trio, which consisted of a drummer, bassist, and keyboard player. Their music drifted into the wasteland of “smooth jazz” a few times, but was mostly good, straight-ahead jazz-rock fusion. The most interesting part of the show was the bassist playing entirely with his fretting hand for a few bars while kneeling and shaking hands with a very young fan. Then I moved on to Americaplatz to see The Difference, corporate band of Air Products, inc. and, according to the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame, the best corporate band in America as of 2001. They did a set of mostly classic rock covers well executed. My night ended at Festplatz, where Mingo Fishtrap, an 8-piece funk band from Texas. They were also quite good, and filled the dance floor to capacity.

Saturday started with Eric Steckel & CTB at Americaplatz, continued with Todd Wolfe at Americaplatz, and then Eric Steckel & CTB again at Liederplatz. Todd Wolfe and his band played a very psychedelic blues-rock that was ok but not my thing, and you could hardly hear his keyboard player. I did not pay close attention to the first Eric Steckel show, but was front and center for the second. The place was so packed that I was lucky to have found any seat; I only did so because a couple with a baby decided to leave. I was quite disappointed that the first hour of the second show was exactly the same setlist as the first show. Surely they have enough material to have put on 3 hours of unique music. At 18 years old, Eric is at least as good as I remembered him, and Craig Thatcher was thoroughly enjoying playing along with his former student. In fact, he was much more animated for this show than he had been fronting his own band a few days earlier. If you like good rocking blues music with some excessive guitar histrionics, you should really check this kid out.

On the last day of the festival I checked out the Sensational Soul Cruisers at a very wet and rainy Americaplatz. In addition to a full Motown-style band, the Soul Cruisers has four lead vocalists. While not quite what I was expecting, they were very polished. They had been scheduled for two sets with a half hour break in between, and while lightning caused an early closure of the stage, they were able to revise the schedule to play for nearly as long as originally intended. I then made my way over to Volksplatz to see the Blues Brotherhood, the local tribute to the Blues Brothers band and movie. I’ve seen them before, and they continue to be a competent but not fantastic band held together by good choreography and banter by “Jake” and “Elwood”. We made it to the Volksplatz trolley stop by 10:50, but at 11:20 no trolley had arrived and we began the long walk across the river.

For the second year in a row, I had a fantastic time at the festival for very little money. I’ve seen a lot of criticism of Musikfest in the newspaper and local blogs recently, but I have almost all positive things to say about it. I am very lucky indeed to have such a mostly free event so close to home. Now, to try to catch up on all the work I did not do during the last 10 days …