Frenchy’s Fracas

General Info
Artist: Jill Scott || ||
Location: Paradiso, Amsterdam
When: 23 November 2007

Who?
Ah, Jill Scott.. One of my favorite artists and always a pleasure to see her performing live. This lady’s been working very hard for quite some time now and her reputation as one of the top black musicians of her generation is well deserved. I’ve listened to all her stuff since the Who Is Jill Scott? album and although not all her albums are top notch, you have to experience her live show..
Check out some of her performances at .

The Show
Ah, well.. We had quite some problems with the sound system and miss Scott kept checking with the audience if we could hear well enough. Another more annoying thing was the stupidity of some people in the crowd, yapping and yapping through the show instead of shutting up and paying attention to what Jilly was singing and telling us. With Jill Scott, it’s not only the music, it’s also the performance, chatting with the crowd, some poetry and some nasty and wicked fun. So if people in the audience really feel the need to talk, it’d be nice if they’d just leave the concert hall and go jump off a cliff or something..

Songs that Stood Out
She opened with Let It Be/The Real Thing, both tracks that didn’t really work for me on the album, but the Lady makes it all come together on the stage. I liked the fact that she skipped Getting in the Way without me even noticing it during the gig. She doesn’t (or ever did) need that track to entertain her crowd.
She really caught me off guard with Crown Royal, because for me the track was just a great party between the sheets track. But with It’s just a metaphore she took the track to a whole different direction. The change didn’t ruin the song, it just gave it another dimension.
When she started the first words of He Loves Me the crowd went totally mental and kept on cheering and applauding for a very beautiful minute or so (I get goose bumps thinking about that moment). And when she went all opera, it was literally awesome..
Her performance of My Love was another incredible show of strength, this woman will take your heart and soul to another level of feeling and loving. Loving yourself and feeling better about yourself regardless of the hurting and despair. You see a Strong Woman and she inspires.
Her incredible And I Heard at the end of the show was another great moment in Storytelling: she shares her poetry with her audience like a parent telling a bedtime story to a bunch of kids. We ate it all up like sweet candy.. And, this track puts the big G back in Gospel, my brothers and sisters!

Conclusion
The performers and the audience didn’t always click that well in the beginning, due to technical problems and a part of the audience who didn’t understand the importance of listening and paying attention.
But Jilly just kept on going with the show and together with those in the crowd who really came to see and hear this girl do her stuff, we all created a beautiful evening with words and sounds. Everybody needs to experience this lady perform her stuff live..
Thank you, Jill Scott.

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General Info
Artist: Wayne Shorter Quartet
Location: Amsterdam Concert Hall, Amsterdam
When: 21 June 2007

Who?
Tricky stuff, for me the Name counted as a reason to go see this performance. Read more about Wayne Shorter here. This guy is one of the original Jazz Legends and when Hieronymus Fox told me about this wacky combo of classical music and a jazz quartet, I just had to go and experience it all for myself.

The Show
Hmm.. Unusual setup for me: two segments, the first part was just the orchestra playing three pieces and after the break they were joined by the quartet. The first part was a brand new sound experience for me: listening to an orchestra doing a live performance was incredible. The different sounds and volumes from all the different instruments had my ears working overtime. Just simply not used to listen to music in that way. Liked the pieces, especially the Duke Ellington Suite. Funny thing: my audio-memory couldn’t explain why the brass section’s sound came from way too much in the back; I was expecting it to be louder and more up front, just my musical freshmanship, I guess.
The second part was where mister Shorter and his quartet finally came on the stage. And well.. It was interesting, but it seemed like Shorter wasn’t really into it. These things happen, there may be a good reason, but as part of the audience, I got the impression that he really wasn’t participating. John Patitucci’s big smile on bass was the most entertaining part of the performance.

Conclusion
I was lucky enough to go to the show without any expectations and I guess that made the whole thing more interesting. It was great to hear an full classical orchestra play jazz-based music and arrangements. It was also great to see the combination of the quartet and the orchestra, I listened to it with my eyes closed to take in the awesome collection of different sounds coming from all directions. For the record: I’m totally aware that I was in the presence of great musicians, and while the show wasn’t that great, I was very much enjoying atmosphere of craftmanship and quality that surrounded me.

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General Info
Artist: The Brand New Heavies
Location: Paradiso, Amsterdam
When: 13 May 2007

Who?
This band, The Brand New Heavies, used to be one of my favorite bands back in the 90s - they have this great retro thing going on: classic Soul with a hint of modern influences; back then, they called it acid jazz.
Their first, self-titled album still triggers sweet memories of a more personal nature (yep, it’s private, so bugger off gently..). And their second album, Heavy Rhyme Experience, Volume 1 is one of my favorites. After more ten years, I got a chance to see these guys performing live again!

The Show
Due to a small scheduling screwup by yours truly, we arrived just minutes before the show started (sorry about the Hieronymus Fox ;)). You really could feel a bit of anticipation in the crowd and I think most of them weren’t disappointed. For me, the new songs didn’t work at all but when they did their classics like Dream Come True and BNH, I was a happy little puppy. My all-time favorite, Stay This Way took me back to Nostalgic Times!
But still, something wasn’t quite right: the band played a solid set and miss N’Dea Davenport’s vocals were excellent, yet it all seemed a bit.. routine, I guess..

Conclusion
Excellent band, some high points in the set combined with some low and uninspired points. The 90-minutes set (including 2 encores) didn’t feel like the uplifting experience I expected from seeing and hearing this band again; but that could be just me not properly managing my expectations, heh.
Maybe Nostalgia only gets you that far.

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UPDATE: Here’s Hieronymus Fox’s review on Last.fm.

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Second gig that evening.. A nice follow-up to Terry Callier ’s show earlier that evening!

General Info
Artist: Fertile Ground
Location: Paradiso, Amsterdam
When: 23 March 2007

Who?
Well, this time Hieronymus Fox was totally clueless, he never heard of these guys. So this time I wasn’t the only ignoramus, heheh..

The Show
After a great soul and blues gig, this concert by Fertile Ground was a nice switch. A master behind the keyboards, a solid drummer, trumpet player and sax man. And a strong and beautiful Black Woman on vocals: a powerhouse!
These guys played a powerful set for about an hour and the crowd in the smaller venue went wild. Although sometimes, they did tend to get a bit to overeager in showing their prowess, but that wasn’t too annoying.

Conclusion
Very nice show, these guys are an act that’s worth watching and listening to. Hope to see them play live again soon.

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First things first..
I went to Amsterdam to see just one show, but I got terribly lucky and got to enjoy two great performances!
The second show at Paradiso was a Baltimore band called Fertile Ground and after that, the guys from Kindred Spirits set up a weird and interesting DJ set which also was a nice surprise. So, the whole evening was quite nice, I guess

General Info
Artist: Terry Callier
Location: Paradiso, Amsterdam
When: 23 March 2007

Who?
Well, read about this here and to be honest, I didn’t know a lot about this artist: I just got dragged along by Hieronymus Fox. He kinda usually gets these things right in one try.. Damn his heart, heheh..

The Show
Seasoned musicians.. These guys get on stage and you immediately know that you’re gonna get entertained by a class act. These guys did need some time to warm up and standing in the back with a way too noisy crowd wasn’t helping either. But during the second half of the show we moved a bit more to the middle of the crowd and that made quite a difference. Mister Calliers sweet and powerful vocal chords mixed beautifully with the well-balanced band of music lovers.

Conclusion
Didn’t know exactly what to expect, but the love and caring mister Callier and the band showed for their music shone through and that was a great experience. You know, that week, the Rolling Stones announced they’d be revisiting Holland this year for another concert: big effing deal - it’s an embarrassing thing to see those oldies make a fool of themselves.
What I saw this evening were musicians with true heartfelt love for their music: these weren’t oldies, these were Grand Old Men.

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