Mahanthappa Does Manhattan at the Standard

"Guggenheim fellow and 2011 Downbeat International Critics Poll 'Alto Saxophonist of the Year'" reads the Jazz Standard's promo blurb for Rudresh Mahanthappa,who played at the club tonight with an ensemble consisting of guitarist David Gilmore, bassist Rich Brown, and drummer Damion Reid. The Italian-born, Indian-influenced Berklee graduate and his band cooked up an evening of wild riffs, electronics and complex rhythms. The band often swerved from the harmonic scales of Eastern music directly into bluesy solo lines and back to your basic modal jazz, with significant touches of fusion from time to time. Indeed, if I had closed my eyes at certain moments I could have believed I was at a Mahavishnu Orchestra concert, especially when Gilmore took over, which was often. If they were not covering tunes from Inner Mounting Flame or Visions of the Emerald Beyond they might as well have been. But no sooner did that impression take hold than they landed squarely in some other mode, or explored electronic echoes (apparently mediated by a MacAir notebook that almost had the role of a fifth performer).

Overall this was not revolutionary stuff - few if any moments of pure atonality, no dissonant free jazz free-for-alls, but an idiom that was a bit more contemporary than post-bop without getting carried away. Mahanthappa seems content to play the instrument, without exploring the tonal possibilities of screeches, screams, reedy harmonics or tortured glissandos. None of which I missed very much, in case you were wondering. On the other hand, while he cannot be accused of lacking variety, by about halfway through the set I felt I had heard enough notes for two sets, and wished he would just slow down and dwell on something - that is, something other than the machine-gun repeated-note motifs that popped up from time to time. A little too much of "that saxophone thing", as I once heard someone express it. The effect was that of listening to someone run through his exercises as rapidly as possible - the musical content often seemed vanishingly thin, as the notes poured out in waterfals of sound that seemed as if they could have dwelled in a hundred different pieces equally well.

About the same was true of the very talented David Gilmore, whose style could not contrast more sharply with that of his near-namesake from Pink Floyd. The latter Gilmour has one main virtue - the ability to unfold a slow, intense, profoundly melodic lead line at crucial points in the music. The present Gilmore is all stabs and jabs, skips and amazingly technical runs. Though his stylistic range seems more strictly modal and traditional jazz than that of Mahanthappa, he jumps around the fingerboard and pulls off sequences that, if they are basically finger-training exercises, are still too complex for even a standard guitarist (I guess I can call myself that) to understand just what he is doing. Sometimes he trades lightning-fast riffs with Mahanthappa; sometimes he cross-picks and sounds like Pat Metheny or McLaughlin in his more meditative moments; sometimes he pops out jagged rhythmic lines that suddenly manage to converge on what the band as a whole is up to. It's fascinating stuff, but to haul out the old saw, perhaps technique was so front and center as to overshadow basic musicianship.

Rich Brown, the bassist, plucked a six-string instrument and managed to keep a solid bottom in music that shifted styles as often as it did rhythms. He stood out in one piece, performing several minutes of more or less solo bass that involved some fingerstyle fretwork with an almost classical sound. Damien Reid tore through some impressive solos when he was not keeping the rest of the band on course during their eastern rhythmic excursions and extended solos.

This was a fun evening, with a lot of impressive playing. It could perhaps have been improved by a steadier focus of one sort or another: I would have been interested to see a deeper exploration of the Indian classical connection, or a concerted effort to bring 1970's fusion into the 21st century in a coherent way, or even more development of the electronic elements. As it was, there were a lot of satisfying moments, but a somewhat diffuse evening overall. These are brilliant musicians who just need a little more self-control - they've got the architecture of a solo down pat, but the architecture of a concert is a taller order.

Paul McCartney at Yankee Stadium (Friday July 15 2011) - Revised, with photos added

Mac pretty nearly sold out two nights at Yankee Stadium, with a capacity of more than 50,000, not counting these added seats on the grounds. No lack of consumer confidence in this sector.

Many years ago I had an Irish girlfriend. Once, when we were visiting her parents' house for Christmas, her grandfather gave us a taste of an old Irish tune Grandpa, a former Bayonne, NJ, fireman, was  86 years old at the time, and allegedly smoked a pack of Camels a day and went through sixpacks of beer on a regular basis. Be that as it may, Grandpa McMahon could not just sing, he could belt. Maybe the highest notes were not quite there, maybe the intonation was not perfect, but I'm telling you, it was quite a performance. My girlfriend also had an uncle who was merely in his sixties, by my guess, and when he sang it was more like the smooth operatic performace of... well, Placido Domingo, say, who I saw at the Met a couple of years ago. He was singing at the Met at 69. So it's not only the Irish, but Domingo is Domingo. We're talking about regular folks.

Age does not always not always correlate to vocal ability, not perfectly anyway. Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan had pretty much lost their voices by their early sixties. Pete, at least, had an admirable singing voice but used it incorrectly. Dylan could push it out, if not exactly elegantly, but he made a trademark of his style nonetheless. Both of them, sadly, lost whatever gift they had not because of age but because of strain on he wrong parts of the vocal apparatus. ("Keep your epiglotis down!" my vocal coach used to insist. Thank you; I followed the advice as well as I could, and sing about as badly today as I ever did.)

I say yes, you say no... he say don't stop for another 36 songs

Then there's Sir Paul. If they hadn't knighted him already, they should do it for his concert Friday night. He sang 36 songs, played the bass, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, piano, mandolin and ukelele, and exited after 2 1/2 hours sounding just about as good as when he came on stage at around 8:45.

Aside from the overall quality of the concert, there were a number of moving moments. One came after the band finished its 6th number, and McCartney announced that they were going to do a song he had never before performed in concert. Some obscure number from one of his solo albums, maybe? No - the band launched into "The Night Before", one of the best cuts on the Help! album.

McCartney performing Lennon's "Give Peace a Chance"

Two others were when Paul gave moving tributes to John Lennon and George Harrison. He opened the Lennon tribute with a short morality tale about waiting too long to say something to someone and then finding it is too late. That is presumably the sentiment behind "Here Today", released in April 1982 on the Tug of War album, a year and a half after John's death. His reminiscence of George centered on a story about George having been an excellent ukulele player (Paul said he studied with some famous ukelele teacher). Paul related that he showed up at George's apartment one day and announced that he had learned one of George's songs on the ukulele. The band then went into "Something", with Paul initially carrying the rhythm part on uke (a routine they have apparently done since the Concert for George after Harrison's death).

Among the other highlights was a spot early in the show when, after performing "Let Me Roll It", the band launched into an instrumental that was essentially the music to Jimi Hendrix's "Foxy Lady". Paul subsequently said that it was done as a tribute to Hendrix, and related that only a few weeks (days?) after the release of Sgt. Pepper Hendrix had opened a show that the Beatles attended by playing the title track from that album.

The band did two sets of encores after a show that already exceeded two hours. One of them was "Helter Skelter", complete with a wild video of roller coasters "coming down fast.

Paul allegedly wrote "Helter Skelter" to demonstrate his rowdy side. It has more than accomplished this goal.

But nothing matched the excess of his performance of "Live and Let Die", which was accompanied by frequent explosions of red flares and fireworks from the front and behind the stage.

Paul hammed it up afterwards, miming deafness and disapproval.

Yankee Stadium proved to be a reasonable venue for a rock concert. The band was set up in the back, near the bleechers, with the most expensive seats arranged in front of the stage. All the stadium seats were so far away that the band looked about the size of toy soldiers, but of course the obligatory video screens on either side gave everyone a live feed of the goings on, and supertitles on either side of the stadium provided slightly delayed transmission of not only the song lyrics but most of McCartney's banter.

A small sampling of the mayhem during "Live and Let Die"

The venue also provided Paul with his best one-liner: "Who's this guy Jeter? They say he has more hits than me!" Yes; a few... though with 22 post-Beatles studio albums McCartney probably has more records.

My only serious criticism of the concert is that Paul never announced the band members. It was not until the second set of encores that he gave tribute to the lighting and sound crews, and then mentioned almost incidentally "my wonderful band" or something of that sort. There's no excuse for that, really. These folks have careers too and deserve individual recognition. They were Abe Laboriel Jr. on drums, Rusty Anderson on guitar, Brian Ray on bass, and Paul "Wix" Wickens on keyboards. They have all played with McCartney for many years, and are an impeccable group of musicians.

It might seem that slavishly imitating George Harrison's or Denny Laine's guitar lines or Ringo's drum parts is no great way to spend your musical career. For me, on the contrary, it seems like knocking off "Something" or "Band on the Run" in Yankee Stadium, on a huge state-of-the-art sound system, to a capacity crowd of over 50,000 people, is about the biggest high I could imagine. The band never seemed for a second like they felt as if they had played this stuff one too many times. And with McCartney's hundreds of composition credits and a few noteworthy covers, I don't suppose they are in much danger of getting bored.

Though it is a little ridiculous to be disappointed about anything after a concert of 37 songs, I did miss a few post-Beatles favorites. There was nothing from Ram, still my favorite of his post-Beatles recordings; none of the great stuff on Venus and Mars and very little from Wings at the Speed Of Sound (I would have loved to hear "Beware My Love" or "Wino Junko"). I was also nourishing a slim hope that he would do "Lonely Road", one of his best recent songs (from Driving Rain, supposedly his "Heather album"). No such luck. But if you had asked me if a year ago whether I thought I would ever hear Paul McCartney play "Day Tripper", "All My Loving", "Band on the Run" and "Jet" live, the answer would surely have been that that was an idle fantasy. So, some fantasies come true at the new Yankee Stadium.

Here's the set list (Mac's instrument as noted stays the same until the next note):

"Jet", with aeronautical imagery

1. Hello, Goodbye (Paul on bass)

2. Junior's Farm

3. All My Loving

4. Jet

5. Drive My Car

6. New song(?) (Mac announced this as a song from the "new" album, but the latest album I know of is the 2007 Memory Is Full. Perhaps it hasn't been released yet? The song was a rocker and didn't sound like any song on the 2007 disk. A little help, anyone?)

7. The Night Before (world premiere live, according to Paul)

8. Let Me Roll It (Paul on a Les Paul electric guitar)

9. Foxy Lady (instrumental)

10. Paperback Writer (Paul on a semi-hollow electric, maybe ES330)

11. The Long and Winding Road (I have no note about him switching to keyboard here, though it would make sense given the next few numbers. I think Wix must have carried off the keyboard parts.)

12. Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five

13. Let 'Em In

14. Maybe I'm Amazed

15. I've Just Seen a Face (Paul on acoustic guitar)

16. I Will

17. Blackbird (unaccompanied, as you would expect)

18. Here Today

19. Dance Tonight (Mac on mandolin)

20. Mrs. Vanderbilt (Mac on acoustic guitar)

21. Eleanor Rigby

22. Something (Mac on ukelele, then acoustic guitar)

23. Band on the Run (Mac on bass)

24. Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da

25. Back in the USSR

26. I've Got a Feeling (Mac on a Les, including an extended jam with him playing some lead guitar)

27. A Day in the Life (going directly into...)

28. Give Peace a Chance

29. Let It Be (Mac on piano)

30. Live and Let Die (with extensive fireworks on and off stage)

31. Hey Jude (this closed the regular set)

32. Lady Madonna (Mac on piano)

33. Day Tripper (Mac on bass)

34. Get Back (this closed the first set of encores)

35. Yesterday (Mac on acoustic)

36. Helter Skelter

37. Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight (Paul preceded this with a little speech about it being time for everyone to go home, apparently anticipating the line 'Once there was a way/to get back homeward... etc.) 

One of the Beatles tribute songs - "Here Today" or "Something".