Strange but not a stranger

[sovay]

derspatchel and I saw the Bernie Worrell Orchestra tonight at Johnny D's.

I think that might have been the closest I will ever come in my life to seeing Stop Making Sense live.

Bernie Worrell being, famously, the keyboardist with Talking Heads for most of the 1980's—visible in the concert footage for Demme's film; he is quite recognizable—and one of the founding members of Parliament-Funkadelic. We got an extended instrumental jam of "Burning Down the House" and "Genius of Love." Vamping the bass progression, the audience starting to smile, holding back to see if those last words of his about burning had just been a tease, and then those shivery, theremin-like quivers on the synthesizer. Collective grin with appropriate admixture of shouts. I couldn't tell if we were in for a singalong, but Worrell played all the vocals, dancing over the melody: holding the chorus with huge, symphonic chords. At one point he threw a hornpipe into Tom Tom Club. Because he could. The sing-along turned out to be "Come Together," which snuck up out of the bass and saxophone noodling around at the end of the song about spies: the audience got into shouting the refrain of that one. ("Over who?") And over that unmistakable rolling bass riff, Worrell picked out the melody of "Eleanor Rigby"—very simply at first, then with increasing improvisation, like a violin or a vocalise. And in between and around and after we got a solid wall of swirling, crunchy funk-jazz-rock-anything-the-band-felt-like-I-swear-there-was-a-brief-interlude-of-cool-jazz-in-there-lacking-only-whisk-brushes-for-the-true-West-Coast-sound. They played a two-and-a-half-hour set. No breaks. No encore, either, but we did not feel shortchanged. I never expected to hear either of those two songs performed by anyone who had originated them. I never expected to hear anyone who could get so many different sounds out of a Minimoog as Worrell. I don't think it's hyperbole to say the show was the best live music I've heard all year.

The last few days have been rotten for my health: I felt so wiped on Thursday, I didn't see rushthatspeaks; I had the kind of sore throat that hurt to swallow with for Thor: The Dark World and by Saturday, during an ill-advised foray to the Boston Public Library, I was running a recurring fever. Today I was mostly fine until halfway through the opening act (Chroma Concept; we liked them better the later they got in their set, when they left off the free-form Phish improv and just started grooving) when I felt suddenly dizzy and head-pounding and went through a brief flash of paranoia that I had been accidentally caffeine-poisoned until it went away; I don't think I've made the recovery I was hoping for. I would prefer to make my voice lesson tomorrow, but I'll have to see how I feel in the morning. It's kind of sucked.

Between discovering Moss of Moonlight on Friday, however, downloading a ton of obscure Owl Service and associated English folk from Stone Tape Recordings last night, and then tonight's experience with Bernie Worrell, it's been a great weekend for music.