Derek Trucks rocks Luminato

I was all settled in to spend my Sunday evening at the Varsity office when I received an urgent message from my friend Jesse: The Derek Trucks Band was playing a free show for Luminato. He made it clear that I would be making a grave mistake by not attending:

This is one of the best bands in the world!

Hmm. A free concert with one of the greatest slide guitar players in the world?

He might have surpassed Duane Allman. Derek is 6 years older than Duane was when he died.

He’s a complicated man.

Derek Trucks is Duane Allman meets Ravi Shankar meets John Coltrane

Ravi Shankar eh?

Derek studied Indian music at some school in cali that’s the only american music school that teaches that stuff.

He summarized.

Derek Trucks is the messiah.

As a bonus, he mentioned that Jerry Douglas might be around.

He’s the best dobro player of all time. Nobody would argue that.

Fine, fine. Sold. I biked down to Dundas Square.

Did the show live up to his hype? Simply, yes.

Here’s an absolutely atrocious recording of Derek Trucks soloing (I was standing next to the amps so it was just too much for my poor iPhone mic to handle):

Sadie May Crash

I finally edited some photos from a Sadie May Crash concert taken at a show at Sneaky Dee’s earlier this year.

If the 32 comments on the Varsity’s profile of the band are any indication, they have some pretty rabid fans.

01_Five%20Years.mp3

Funk Festival at Nathan Phillips Square

Keeping James Brown alive

Daryl Brown (biological son of James) and Fred Thomas (an original bassist) perform with the Soul Generals in the Luminato Funk Festival.

I came to the show with mediocre expectations but the band was incredibly tight, performing authentic renditions of most of the James Brown hits.

Two minor criticisms

• There was a tendency for the band’s beat to creep away from James Brown’s signature emphasis on the 1s to the more conventional and less funky 2s and 4s.
• The outro was a bit awkward; hip hop dancers were added to the mix and the the lead guitarist combined heavy metal arpeggios with performance tricks borrowed from Jimi Hendrix.

After an interlude provided by DJ Starting from Scratch, Morris Day and The [motherfuckin] Time took over. At the end of the performance, Morris brought a handful of pre-selected females from the crowd and lined them up on stage, evaluating their dancing and other “assets”. To add to the creepy-factor, remember that he’s in his 50s and was wearing a fur coat on this year’s hottest day yet.

Maceo Parker

This shot was not supposed to be. When my gf and I entered the Docks, the security saw both of our cameras and took the batteries. While I argued back and forth with them, they forgot about her and her second battery which she had in her bag which I was then able to use.

Note the condensation around his head

It comes as no shock that the show was incredibly funky - it had a good blend of the James Brown hits and Maceo’s own stuff, performed with the help of an incredibly solid backing band. In addition to ripping out sax solos, Maceo led songs, bantered about the good old days, and even soloed a few times on his flute (who knew he could play?).

Unlike Al Green, Maceo obliged the crowd and performed Pass the Peas as a trippy, winding encore.

Al Green

(awful picture - I was just taking a test shot and was planning to shoot more during the encore but… read on)

The original plan was to play a game of chicken with the scalpers by approaching them as far into the opening act as possible. We lost: the scalpers left, and we ended up having to buy $65 tickets. Apparently, we were doomed before we even started - someone gave us the scoop on just how organized they are. Someone even alleged that Tickemaster gives partial refunds to the scalpers (i.e. nothing to lose)

Al Green spent many years as a preacher in Memphis and he tried to do a bit of preaching during the show. It was clear that Toronto wasn’t the place for the gospel though - people started yelling out things like “Oh Jesus” and he promptly cut it short and launched back into a hit. Other than the the keyboardist’s use of the always-awful string-synth (there’s never an excuse!!), the sound was remarkably close to the original cuts from the 70s.

After the show, Al got a 15 minute standing ovation, complete with chants and emotional pleas for an encore. Unfortunately, according to the ushers who we talked to after, he rushed out of the building as soon as he left the stage. I guess that it’s a privilege enough to hear him perform at this age, even without an encore.