Saturday, November 17, 2012

Jim Black/Nels Cline @ Cornelia St 11/9/12

It was listed as Jim Black Duo with Mystery Guitarist.  I immediately figured it had to be Nels Cline.  Sure enough that was noted on the door when I entered.

It was even better than I could have possibly imagined.  They're both amazing.  I forgot how phenomenal Jim is.  I mean, I knew he was phenomenal as a concept but experiencing it is a whole other thing.  Everything he did was stellar.  There was one point where he coordinated a drumbeat and cymbal strike at the same moment.  He did that again and again with different beats and cymbals.  It was amazing.  It reminded me of the Tibetan Ceremony Music I heard at the MIM in Brussels.

Jim also played the ipad as a touch instrument.  It looked like the sounds were programmed into a laptop and would change depending on where and how he touched the ipad screen, which was laying flat on the floor tom.  It wounded great.

Nels had a megamic, the same kind Jessica Lurie uses.  It's an almost obsolete toy microphone.  Jessica mentined once that they're hard to find now and she looks for them on ebay.  Nels would use vocals and the megamic to vibrate the guitar strings.  He also had lots of great electronics and was very interesting to watch.

They played for about an hour then took a break.  They announced they would now play a song they wrote 10 seconds from now.  That set was under an hour yet very satisfying.

I chose well.


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