I’m not kidding. I was sitting around today thinking about how I’m going to have some actual free time this weekend to go out and hit the clubs to see some live music and I started musing on what, hands down and flat out was the best show I ever saw. Big question and it was not an easy choice. Was it standing on stage with Los Lobos while they brought tears to my eyes singing, “Little John of God?” almost. Or was it King Sunny Ade and his African Beats with their 18 man percussion section and 5 Strats dancing across the Greek theater stage — dang close, that was a special one. I was singing in Nigerian before that night was over.
No it was closer to home, closer to my Irish roots. We’ve all of us who live and breathe music had a night like I had at one of my favorite San Francisco haunts. Nights like this and the possibility of having it recreated in parallel by another band on another night is what keeps us going out and not raging against the dying of the light, but embracing it as it means it’s getting close to showtime.
Here’s my story:
Aug. 1, The Fillmore Auditorium, SF: –Afro Celt Sound System
The opening act singer songwriter was long gone and the stage/working lights up for close to an hour; the crowd was getting restive. Polite they were, as this was a San Francisco, mutl-culti-aging twirler crowd by and large, but still, restive and a bit noisy. If this had been the north of England, bottles would be flying, my Irish pal, Johno told me, his temper starting to fray like the cuffs of his worn corduroy jacket. There are only so many times you can watch the stagehands busily move about the stage, putting out water bottles and taping set lists to keyboard and mic stands.
When at long last, almost an hour and a half late, a scraggly DJ grabs a mic and gives a nice line of “Welcome” patter, including a pitch to buy the latest CD by ACSS at the front door, I thought the crowd was ready to blow. But fortunately the band trotted on stage past the DJ, and I was thinking to myself, I hope they live up to the expectations I have after listening to their CD constantly for the last month.
The stage lights went down to a cold blue and a lilting, air-brushed synth-line swelled as singer, Iarla O’Lionaird strode to center stage. A diminutive man, dressed in standard issue Irish: leather coat, black shirt, black pants and non-descript shoes, looking for all the world like he was about to give a labour union pitch at the back of the pub. Iarla stood stone still at center stage feeling for the night’s muse, then finding it, rolled his head back and opened his mouth to sing.
The Fillmore began to levitate with his ethereal, huge blossom of a voice. Singing in Irish with James McNally and Emer Mayok’s low flute and Uilleann pipes playing off the growing monster groove being built by Drummer Johnny Kalsi; the groove that is Release, the crowd was instantly transported to a different world. It was then that N’faly Kouyate carrying his 21 stringed Kora and Moussa Sissokho with his talking drum danced out from stage right with the largest smiles in anticipation of creation that I’ve ever seen. N’faly’s smile and demeanor, not to mention the Kora, lit the crowd up like a bong at a Grateful dead show. The crowd began to laugh, to smile, to dance, jump and throw themselves about the room, totally drawn in, totally locked into the moment with the band. Wait, let me slightly rephrase that: As the Fillmore was packed to the rafters, one could only scratch one’s dancing jones by pogo’ing straight up and down in time with the band. There just wasn’t room for flailing about from side to side. But you couldn’t help yourself, you HAD to move. It was like the early eighties shows I used to go to at the old Mabuhay Gardens – hundreds of people jumping up and down, unable to stand still at the ferocious onslaught of music. I could feel the sprung floor of the Fillmore bouncing in time and for a split second had a shot of fear of the building collapsing. Then I thought, so what. If I gotta go, and we all have to go sometime, this is how I want it to be – locked into a sonic trance, as happy as elevated in spirit as any music has ever lifted me.
The Afro Celts amazingly held this height of crowd elation for the entire two hours of the show. One stunning smackdown groove followed the next. Impossibly expressionistic drumming, kept the crowd’s collective jaws dropped the floor. Merging the African talking drums and north African hard goatskin drums that sound like a hammer hitting stone, with possibly the finest Bodhran player alive; all this with the poetry that is all things Irish – wailing pipes, flutes, mando-cello and acoustic guitars.
Forgive the next bit of hyperbole, but I believe this is the without a doubt best show I’ve ever seen. Period. Now I grew up going to the Fillmore and then later to the Winterland almost every weekend of my teen years. And in my professional life as a FOH audio guy I worked at nearly 1,500 shows just between 1988 and 1996. Simply said, I’ve seen all kinds of music for more years than I want to admit to. But I’ve never walked out of a show–stone sober, thank you – babbling and holding onto the groove for days like I have for the Afro Celts. I’m just about ready to un-retire from my cube farming and melt back into concert production; to go work for Afro Celts – that is, would, if they didn’t have a sterling audio engineer in Martin Russell. Perfect work, Dude.
In short, buy their albums, see their shows, buy their merch. Support live bands and live music. Filling our heads with music is our only hope of surviving this cold hard world.
BT
