Live Music! It is Good

Last night I succumbed to temptation and ventured into a venue where I knew my ear plugs would be mandatory.

I've always been a keyboard fan. Both rock and jazz piano and organ. Either straight rock or jazz get tedious to me, but the combination of the two is intriguing.

The Mystic Theater in Petaluma was hosting Brian Auger and his Oblivion Express, which plays exactly the sort of fusion I'm talking about. My first thought was, who did I know who might enjoy seeing this with me? Too loud and jazz/rockish for Bonnie, I was sure. I imagine the guitar players I know are pretty much ignorant of or not interested in seeing an old jazz rocking organist. (Just now as I'm writing this I thought of one I should have asked. A day late and a dollar short, so to speak. Sorry, Rob!)

I was terribly afraid that Auger would show up here in Petaluma and no one would come out to see him. I never knew anyone besides musicians who knew about him, and the musicians I play with now aren't into his sort of high energy music.

I finally called a friend, Troy Silveira, a fine pianist and delightful guy I used to play music with. He found me at the Mystic half way through the opening act, Plum Crazy, who turned out to be quite an exciting and talented local band of "kids" (meaning they all looked to be under 40...) who got progressively more far out and interesting as their original set progressed. And they're from Petaluma! Who'd a guessed such things existed. Each of the players is much much MUCH better at their instrument than I am (like they're from a different planet than I am, a planet where musicians practice obsessively, giving up sleeping and eating and other distractions) which is kinda depressing, but at the same time inspiring. (I guess doubling on too many instruments, and being too easily distracted, leads to that sort of realization of mediocrity.)

(Googled the Plum Crazy Myspace site. I see the site that comes up just after theirs on Google is Weird Al's. Interesting.)

When I called down to the ticket office the day of the show to see if there were any tickets left, the person on the phone said, "Yeah, we have LOTS of them left!" I heard the word "LOTS" in capitals, just like that. I had thoughts of this music legend coming to town to find a nearly empty theater. So imagine my surprise when every time I looked behind me (I was in the front row, left corner) there were more and more people there. The place ended up fairly packed. And, except for a couple of small kids, the only folk there under 40 were the opening act. The kids in town don't know what they missed.

Auger had his silver-sparkly Hammand B-3 set on the left side of the stage (as seen from the audience.) On top of it was his equally silver-sparkly Korg SG-X keyboard, from which he played his standard Wurlitzer electric piano sound. (Here's the band in the same setup on YouTube.) Sitting in the front left corner seat, I could more or less follow what he was doing, or so I thought at first. As though it were a Dead Concert, a steady stream of aging rocker couples drifted on to the dance floor between me and the band, until I only caught glimpses of Auger and his band, which includes his daughter, Savannah, on vocals and writhing dancing, and his son, Karma, on drums. Troy commented on how Karma and the bass player, Derek Frank, played so far ahead of the beat it was crazy, and Brian played way way back behind the beat, unless he wanted to jump right into the center of it, which he would then do. The amazing thing was that it all worked just perfectly. I had been focusing on Brian's playing and hadn't noticed how they spread the beat out, but he was right. What impressed me was how Brian totally ignored the almost mandatory Leslie speaker sound, and used the B-3 chorus setting very sparingly. A very stark and signature sound.

Throughout the show, I explained to Troy how these songs, many new to him, were from various Auger LPs from the 60s and 70s. To me, Auger was the most impressive of the rock organists, inflecting his playing with lots of jazz chords and chromatic modulations. I'd like to think I've picked up a tiny bit from listening to him.

The guy is sixty six years old, and he plays with the same fire (if not more) than he had forty years ago. Amazing player.

I picked up a live CD from him after the show (which happens to be from the same venue as that YouTube Video), and I'm playing it right now. It's great. Two entire sets from a live show. And I see it's a $41.99 import double CD at Amazon. Take my advice. Buy it from Auger at his show. He sold it (and autographed it) for $20.

Good Show.