Sound Academy, Toronto
August 20, 2008
by Live Music Head
Waiting to the left hand side of the performance space,
Ida, Eric and I are ready when the curtains part.
And when they do,
three well-respected musicians going by the name of SMV:
Stanley Clarke, Marcus Miller and Victor Wooten
appear on the stage.
“how many bass players are in the audience tonight?”,
the rep from JAZZFM 91.1 asks.
The crowd responds with a roar.
It’s indeed all about the bass tonight.
All three play under, together and over each other,
plucking and slapping their bass guitars
along with cool drum bashes from the kit.
And the only white boy in the band is on keyboards.
Marcus Miller, in black pants, white shirt and a cool grey hat
also plays some type of horn.
With an odd shape at the top,
it’s an incredibly long instrument
hovering inches from the stage floor.
The horn is almost the length of Mr Miller’s entire body.
Stanley Clarke is probably the most well-known
bassist of the three,
wearing a stylish black vest and white shirt,
he also sports black & white Converse running shoes,
with a red Levi’s tag hanging off his right pocket.
Victor Wooten?
Well, he's dressed in casual red and black shirt with black pants.
Wootten also plays bass with Bela Fleck and the Flecktones.
The song they start into is called Hillbillies on a Quiet Afternoon,
and the musicianship is on another level.
“Sheer genious”, David Letterman would say.
They make it look so easy.
My friends and I are on the side of Stanley Clarke,
and we watch as he steps to the mic and asks,
“do we need more bass?”
“how about some more bass?”
The room laughs and screams in the positive.
The Academy may not be sold out tonight,
but it’s pretty jam packed all the same.
And I get neck strain trying to see.
My ear seems to gravitate
to the sound of Marcus Miller the most.
I’m not sure why.
All the basses sound amazing with their distinctive sounds.
I just wish I could understand this level of musical talent.
Fingers crawling
up and down
and all over the frets,
sometimes so incredibly fast,
it’s mesmerizing.
“Holy shit, did you hear that?”
After some crazy sound reverberates from the stage,
my mind wanders to the 1976 recording of Breezin’
and the song This Masquerade.
There’ll be no singing here tonight,
but that one was sung by the smooth voice of George Benson.
Victor Wooten tickles the bottom and keeps tickling.
All the way to the top of the neck,
his fingers are on fire.
“Marcus Miller”, Victor tells us, “is also a producer..
applying his skills to the work of highly regarded artists like
Miles Davis and Luther Vandross”.
With his bass still slung over his back,
Miller plays the long horn again.
I wonder what it’s called?
“Nobody plays bass like Stanley Clarke”, says Marcus Miller
“And so I wrote this song to feature him”.
The sound of Stanley Clarke on cello
could bring a tear to a glass eye.
Having made my way closer to the stage,
I can now lean into the rail and peer to the right,
enabling me to see the entire length of the front row.
They’re all male;
transfixed, enthralled, captivated,
and with all eyes glued to the stage,
listening intensely, hanging off every note.
But it’s not one of those shushy jazz shows.
On the contrary,
there’s many whoops, whistles and cheers.
The spiralling lights bounce off the disco ball
and when they hit the stage enveloping the band,
a trippy effect appears on the big screen above.
And still the concentration from the players is great.
I’m no musician,
but I doubt even the most hardcore jazz fan
or any of the jazz elitists in the room,
could find flaws in the playing tonight.
Impeccable would be the word to describe it.
As the crowd goes nuts for Stanley Clarke at the end of Milano,
suddenly Ida and Eric must depart,
leaving me behind to get a head start back to Orangeville.
But not before surprising me with a Sgt Pepper coffee mug,
for my birthday.
“the bass universe” was how Stanley Clarke described the show.
The last song was Grits; the highlight of the night,
causing the crowd to scream loud for an encore.
The band returned with a School Days rocker,
a song I believe comes from Mr Clarke’s catalogue.
With thunderous wicked playing,
a great number to end the night,
leaving us with jaws hanging down to our chests.
When the musicians laid down their instruments,
I clutched my Sgt Pepper coffee mug,
and watched the back of Marcus Miller following the other four
as they sauntered off stage with incredible coolness.
http://www.smvmusic.com/
http://www.stanleyclarke.com/
http://marcusmiller.com/marcus/marcus.html
http://www.victorwooten.com/
http://www.sound-academy.com/
