Shrek @ The Stone 5/12/09

Wowweee! This is an incredible band! 3 drummers, Shazaad on a rare guitar, an amazing bass, and Roy Nathanson on sax and middle eastern reed.

I noticed before-hand that Shazaad seemed like he might be out of his comfort zone for this gig. It all made sense when I saw him with a guitar. Chris Wood talks about Ribot had him play guitar one tour because he doesn't want people playing cliche. It worked real well. I thought Shazaad added a lot to the music.

Christine Bard stood most of the time while playing drums and various metal things. I think that was more so she could reach, she wasn't playing cliche the other night, or last night for that matter.

Ah, in my internet searching I discover this IS the band Chris was referring to.

Matt Maneri had some incredible moments with his electric viola. Jim Pugliese really held down a mean groove on the few different drums he was playing. He was especially intense in the last tune.

Rootless Cosmopolitans/Shrek
Marc Ribot (guitar) Christine Bard (percussion) Sim Cain (drums) Sebastian Steinberg (bass) Special guests

Here's what I was reading about the album I must find:
http://jazztimes.com/articles/8636-shrek-marc-ribot
May 1998
Marc Ribot
Shrek
Avant
By Tom Terrell
Downtown guitarist Marc Ribot is a veritable shape-shifting sculptor of wild electrified sonics. Madly skilled in the Hendrixian arts of feedback, wack tunings, exotic scales and crisply shredded notes, Ribot's recordings and performances are often as sensory exhaustive as they are musically satisfying (not a bad thing). Recorded in 1994, Shrek is firmly in the avant garde camp. Over ten tracks, Ribot and Shrek the band (Chris Wood, guitar; Sebastian Steinberg, bass; Christine Bard/Jim Puliese, drums) cause wreck, eschewing identifiably standard song structures for a blurry continuum of multi-layered sounds, skewed rhythms and extraterrestrial transmissions. An intense exercise in wild gravity, Shrek careens madly from the pointillistic Frippertronics of "Forth World" to the grim claustrophobia of "Romance." Well worth the listen-just don't look for a melody.