Recent Music

I’m currently in Chicago for a big HVAC society conference; I’m planning on having lunch with Tappan while I’m in town, and hoping to catch some blues or jazz during a free evening.

But speaking of music, I recently managed to catch two live music shows in Boston. They were both cases of thinking the evening of the concert “Huh… I wonder if they still have tickets,” walking up to the box office, and seeing the show. Man… living in this town rocks (as well as working in town, so I can easily hop the subway to these places).

On Saturday, I went to see The Waiting Room, a Genesis prog-rock tribute band, at the Regent Theater (in Arlington Center, a five-minute walk from my front door). You might react, “Um, Bats, more of this imitation prog-rock-from-when-you-were-five?” (say, like the group I saw in Toronto during grad school). Well, yeah. And hey, in my defense, the lead singer of this group is 32 years old… which means he was born in 1976—after the era that the band was playing most of these songs.

They started off their set with a bunch of Peter Gabriel solo covers (ranging from Car/1977 through Up/2002). However, I have to say that playing Family Snapshot (a song ostensibly about a deranged political assassin) two days before the Obama inauguration felt a bit cringe-inducing. The lead singer could do an amazingly accurate Peter Gabriel singing voice, although sometimes it felt like he was being challenged by the range.

Then they did a long set of old Genesis pieces, including big chunks of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, as well as Firth of Fifth, Battle of Epping Forest, Supper’s Ready. The instrumentalists were utterly amazing—dead-on renditions note for note; the keyboard player was one of the founding members of the band. Also, they did the whole Peter-Gabriel-silly-costumes bit—like the batwing head from 23-minute-long Watcher of the Skies.


On Thursday, Joshua Redman (Harvard-educated jazz saxophonist) and his double trio played at the Berklee Performance Center in Boston. A review of their New York concert here.


The “double trio” was Redman playing with two bassists and two drummers; they occasionally switched out, to be just a trio with one of each. There were some fun moments of dueling bassists, and dueling drummers. A really great set; I went and bought his new album off of iTunes when I got home. Some of it was the “squeaky/sqonky jazz” that I’m not particularly a fan of, but other pieces were just lovely—like a quiet cover of the Moonlight Sonata. Yep, listed in the credits:

All compositions by Joshua Redman (Shedroff Music/EMI) except:

…

“Moonlight” by Ludwig van Beethoven.

Will report on the Chicago music if I get to see it.