Go Love

I stopped in to hear Go Love last night. The group connects me to the spirit of Sidewalk that I found so appealing in the first place. First of all, most of the members are folks who spent time on the scene developing their own work and gradually making social connections before joining together -- at the instigation of Ray Brown, I believe - to form a sort of musical collective. There's a strong sense of musicality to what they're doing, but also a parallel strain of unselfconscious goofiness, and enough rough edges to make things interesting. The opening song had some lovely overlapping vocals sung by Sarah Stanley and Morgan Herringer and it also featured interwoven guitar and ukelele playing. It was nice to hear the flute and glockinspiel used to good effect throughout the night. Percussion effects were played on Tupperware and typewriter. In addition to Ray, Sarah, and Morgan, the group last night included Charles Mansfield, Beau Alessi, and Sonya Gropman. Each performer (with maybe the exception of the typerwriterist Gropman) led the group on a song or two, but there was a lot of collaboration and supportiveness. Their next show, on November 9, is slated to be their last. I don't know about that. I think they better keep the love going. Check out: http://golove1.bandcamp.com/album/go-love and http://golove1.bandcamp.com/album/go-love-ii

I caught parts of Sarah Turk's release show for her cd Saved by the Storm and Ben Pagano's set with his band. Nice work from each of them. I'm sorry that other commitments kept me from hearing the night's complete bill which was drawn from the heart of Sidewalk's artistic corps. The others featured were Kung Fu Crimewave, St. Lenox (Andrew Choi), Mal Blum, and Crazy and the Brains.