Everytime I go to the Forum, I always seem to arrive just in time to miss
the start of the support act, and this time was no exception - I could hear
"Lucky" starting while I was handing over my ticket. Lewis Taylor's LP
(which has caused a crack team of music historians to descend on Barnet to
try and work out how Marvin Gaye could have been in a position to father an
illegitimate child there) is really pretty wonderful, so I was looking
forward to seeing how well he could carry it off live. Very well is the
answer - the gorgeous vocal arrangements found on the LP were delivered in
full by the backing band, and the whole thing was musically very tight. It
would have been nice to see Taylor and the band stretch out some more - but
I guess the short time slot didn't present much of an opportunity. Taylor's
LP has been described as "Hall & Oates in dub", but I can't help thinking
that's more down to him being white than anything else. Think Marvin Gaye,
Earth Wind & Fire, Take 6, maybe some Michael McDonald and a bunch of other
stuff thrown in and you're getting close. It was nice to see that the
backing vocals on "Damn" seemed to put the same smile on Taylor's face that
they put on mine...
Next up was Chris Bowden with the full "Time Capsule" line-up, string
section, wind section, the whole lot. "Time Capsule" is another one of those
LPs that has you wondering if they can pull it off live, and again the
answer is "yes". The set kicked off with "Mothers And Daughters Mothers
Too", my favourite tune from the LP, and sounded completely fabulous. They
also did "Telescope", "Epsilon" and "Sane" from the LP. The solos were
pretty good, especially the pianist, but the strings and stuff sounded so
good I kept wanting them to come back in...
The stuff so far would have constituted a good evening in its own right, but
Courtney Pine kicked off his set with an intensity that made me forget
everything else - with versions of "Garden Of Eden" and "Prince Of Peace"
sounding much more drumandbassed up than on the LP, and Pine playing at a
level I haven't seen him at since his quartet date at the Forum a few years
back with Geri Allen, Smitty Smith & Charnett Moffett. The set went off into
more of a mid-tempo soul-jazz mode for a while afterwards, until Pine
brought on vocalist Mary Pearce to sing "Don't Xplain" and "I've Known
Rivers". Twice, in the latter case, 'coz we got the 4Hero version too (the
cue for some *extremely* silly dancing from some of the audience... perhaps
drum & bass records should come with some sort of instruction booklet) For
an encore CP tried a bit of a freestyle session, which didn't work all that
well (if they were any decent rappers in the audience, they didn't have the
bottle to get up on stage) but then finished things off nicely with
"Redemption Song". A very good set overall - with great solos from Pine
(not a surprise, really) guitarist Cameron Pierre, and DJ Pogo managing to
prove that having turntables in a jazz setting doesn't have to constrain the
rest of the band, as has happened with some other jazz/hip-hop fusion
attempts (Greg Osby come on down.). But I could have done with a *lot* more
of the sort of stuff Pine kicked off with...
..Mark..
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From the office of the daydreamer-in-chief
Mark Allerton Mark@warmspot.compulink.co.uk
http://www.compulink.co.uk/~warmspot/