, Happiness 
This show was another in a pretty good list of guitar slingers that my wife and I have seen at Jazz Alley...Al Dimeola/Peter White/Al Stewart and Jesse Cook. Hope to see Sonny Landreth in a couple of weeks!
John Cale - Royal Festival Hall
Brave man. In the first hour of the concert he played just one song I knew - and I thought I knew them all. Most were from the new album Shifty Adventures In Nookie Wood and are in the same vein as the Island trilogy from the mid 70s. They sounded very good, though the overall effect was that a series of mid-tempo rockers gradually lost momentum.
That was until he unleashed the band on Helen Of Troy. For those who haven't seen Cale in the last few years he's had a pretty stable backing band who are very versatile (they need to be with the way he treats his old songs) and incredibly heavy when called upon, and this was one of those occasions when takes up an electric guitar himself and he lets them loose. The closest I've heard to the rhythmic power they can deliver is Crazy Horse in their pomp. Fantastic version that sounds like a Mack Truck has run over it.
Then it was back to the new stuff, finishing off with (I think) Sandman off the new one which sounded the best of the new bunch.
The encore was back to the Mack Truck and a mashup of Gun and Pablo Picasso.
Normally, when going to see someone as vintage as this you come prepared to make allowances but in his case, even at 70, there was no need. He never put a note wrong and when called upon the wildness is still there, even affter 2 hours.
For those interested there's an excellent live album from the mid 2000s called Circus Live that features pretty much the same line-up as last night.
And this is a taste of what Pablo Picasso can sound like these days, though the sheer impact (and length!) is missing a bit:
Brave man. In the first hour of the concert he played just one song I knew - and I thought I knew them all. Most were from the new album Shifty Adventures In Nookie Wood and are in the same vein as the Island trilogy from the mid 70s. They sounded very good, though the overall effect was that a series of mid-tempo rockers gradually lost momentum.
That was until he unleashed the band on Helen Of Troy. For those who haven't seen Cale in the last few years he's had a pretty stable backing band who are very versatile (they need to be with the way he treats his old songs) and incredibly heavy when called upon, and this was one of those occasions when takes up an electric guitar himself and he lets them loose. The closest I've heard to the rhythmic power they can deliver is Crazy Horse in their pomp. Fantastic version that sounds like a Mack Truck has run over it.
Then it was back to the new stuff, finishing off with (I think) Sandman off the new one which sounded the best of the new bunch.
The encore was back to the Mack Truck and a mashup of Gun and Pablo Picasso.
Normally, when going to see someone as vintage as this you come prepared to make allowances but in his case, even at 70, there was no need. He never put a note wrong and when called upon the wildness is still there, even affter 2 hours.
For those interested there's an excellent live album from the mid 2000s called Circus Live that features pretty much the same line-up as last night.
And this is a taste of what Pablo Picasso can sound like these days, though the sheer impact (and length!) is missing a bit: