What Are You Listening To? November 2019

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Bruce Springsteen - Apollo Theater 03/09/12

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One of these days I'm going to give The Boss his own thread. Zeeb's insightful posts will be a great start. In the meantime, here's an official authorized download worthy of your attention. Five yours ago, the Bruce Springsteen Archives was launched to circulate key live shows in pristine sound quality.


This performance from the historic Apollo Theater in Harlem aired originally on Sirius was chosen for the very first release. Bruce is in fine form, powerfully backed by the retooled E Street Band. Bruce's showmanship and mastery of the venue are on full display as he name checks and/or covers most of the leading soul performers of the 60's, to the delight of the crowd. No one can say that losing Clarence Clemons didn't hurt, but the remaining members take up most of the slack. Two trumpets, two saxes and a trombone add the right brassy punch to the soul covers. Many of the songs come from his middling Wrecking Ball album. They sound much better here with his spoken intros and audience enthusiasm.

:4.5: on the Sam-O-Meter. I'm really looking forward to future installments in this series.
 
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Yay, Ojai! The archive releases of Bruce have been wonderful with a nice distribution between classic older shows (the earliest at The Roxy in 1975) and newer shows. I love the full E Street Band shows but there have been some wonderful solo shows as well (including one at Freehold raising funds for his old Catholic school - at one point he makes a cunnilingus joke in that setting).

As an old fart who loves Bruce's classic material, I love his older shows, but must say, I often turn to the more recent shows over the past decade - not only do they sound great, but Bruce lately has used the wealth of his material to create some really interesting set lists or has taken audience requests (something he did not like doing years ago) even performing whole albums on some shows. There's no doubt that his greatest consistent material was in the 1970s/80s; that being said, I've grown to love some recent material through the live shows and appreciate his later songwriting all the more.

Now I want to break up the Apollo concert!!
(I'm now up to 60 Bruce live concerts so don't get to revisit some as much as I'd like including that one)
 
Miles Okazaki - The Sky Below (2019)


Replacing Craig Taborn with Matt Mitchell at piano (and allowing him to add some keyboard schmoozing) significantly alters the sound of this quartet that is otherwise unchanged from Okazaki's previous album.

This has nebulous rhythm, obtuse melodies, and ... well, it seems a lot like other works featuring Matt Mitchell from recent years. The work the bassist and drummer do to lay down a funky off-kilter rhythm is muddied by Mitchell's contributions. I'll listen to this for Okazaki's interesting playing, but I think I'll make a conscious effort to avoid Mitchell's work in the future. He makes me work too hard.

YMMV. I can see someone else listening to this and going "HELL YEAH!"
 
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