Jumped at the chance to see in demand session guitarist and downtown legend Ribot fronting a power trio at the 9. Ribot on guitar, guitarro, voice and profane rantings; Shahzad Ismailly on bass, some keyboard thing, and La-Z-Boy recliner; loose-limbed young lion Ches Smith on drums and congas. These guys can and have played many styles. Ribot has contributed axe-wielding to Elvis Costello, Tom Waits and countless others. I have often seen Smith at Firehouse 12 scraping some cymbals for Mary Halvorsen and other up and coming jazzbos. On this evening, it was Ribot's turn to let his hair down. (Just kidding, Ribot, mid-50s, has receding gray professor hair, as if he's played one too many gigs with one foot in a bucket of water and the other in a power outlet). Ismailly was an odd rangy figure who appeared to be a burn victim or someone that survived some cranium opening brain surgery. Smith, tall and lanky, 30ish, flailed on the kit and congas even added some backing vocals to the "I'm your personal Nancy Spungen!". I have followed Ribot's career from the early 90s with Don Byron and The Rootless Cosmopolitans, seeing him at Middletown's Lo-fi venue The Buttonwood Tree, with jacket and tie throwing noise at John Lurie's Lounge Lizards ( the origins of this blog's name),' playing acoustic at the Gibson guitar fest at Fort Adams in front of a sheet music stand that had a sign that read "On Time". Marc Ribot is rarely "on time" ,his angular solos and hunched over playing style reminded me of the fantastic Duchamp-ian painting at the Yale Art Gallery of The Knifegrinder. A cubist huddled figure throwing sparks while knifegrinding, or axe-grinding in this case. For this show, the group's new recording YRU Still Here? was showcased. Songs veered from punk rants "I got the right to say fuck you!", to the Latin stylings of his mid-90s period. At one point, Marc launched into a monologue (dialog?diatribe?duolog?) plaintively stating "hippies...are not nice...anymore". Closed the show with a glorious punk-funk meth-fueled reading of Dave Brubeck's Take Five. Oy, or should I say Oi!
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