Sidewalk Cafe, Saturday, October 17

A nice night organized by Barry Bliss, which included performances by Barry, Major Matt USA, Toby Goodshank and Bryan Copeland, who had all just returned from touring together, plus Purple Organ and Joe Crow Ryan.

Bryan Copeland played acoustic bass throughout the night including in the evening's opening set which featured his band Bryan and the Aardvarks. The group featured, in addition to Bryan, drums, vibraphone, and keyboard. It was a kind of keyboard oriented jazz set, with Bryan as leader.

Matt, Barry, Toby, and Brian in various combinations accompanied each other during their individual sets throughout the evening. It was cool to see that while on tour they'd melded into, if not an official "group" at least a comfortable corps of collaborators.

For example, I've heard Matt play Tripping Yourself many times, but it was cool to end it with a bass solo. Sounded really great.

I always love hearing Purple Organ. Doug's set was different in tone than the ones I'd heard in the past. Much less or almost none of the surface-level sexuality that has characterized the sets I've seen of his. Nan commented that the set was "romantic" which I think it was. He called up Toby, Angel, and Daoud to sing this song that had the beautiful and catchy refrain: "no stick, no cage, no electric sock can stop love. Doug's voice is beautiful and his whole one-man band type set up deal is amazing. I still don't understand how he plays all that stuff at once.

Toby Goodshank peformed with a She-Devil poster hung on the curtain behind him. He also had Bryan, Barry and Matt guest on a couple songs. Bryan used his bow on this plaintive song "It's Amazing, It's Amazing--I have you now." It turned out beautifully.

Barry did a great set, switching off from piano to guitar. There were some emotional high points where I thought he was totally consumed by the music and expressing it straight from his soul. There was one spot where he did a bit of whistling too, something I've been wanting to integrate into my performances. Barry also made an announcement about certain very personal nocturnal occurrences that afflicted him while on tour. Thanks for sharing Barry.

By the time Barry played it was quite late and I was already drooping before Joe Crow came on and I still had the long schlep home ahead of me. I always seem to miss out on Joe Crow's sets. Hope he plays an earlier slot next time.