Santa Fe and The Fat City Horns, and friends: April 21st gig at The Palms

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

April 21st gig at The Palms - slammin'!

WEDNESDAY UPDATES, SCROLL DOWN

OK, incremental blogging tonight after the gig. I just dumped 136 shots outa my camera. Gonna take a while to weed through 'em and post the best pics.

Michael Grimm filled in tonight, along with Abe Lamarca, still subbing for the as yet traveling Jamie Hosmer, and Clint Holmes showed up to hang and sit in. Spectacular. (I was hopin' he'd come in, after I'd missed shooting him yesterday at the Norman Kaye benefit when my batteries flamed out.)

Clint did a rendition of James Taylor's "Fire and Rain" unlike any I've ever heard. It was wonderful. He was accompanied by keyboardist / Music Director David Nathan (w/ Toni Braxton). They went all Latin in the middle of the tune, Clint scatting away all Al Jarreau / Bobby McFerrin-ish, like he always does so well.

The house was kinda slow at first, but the crowd soon filled in and got right with the program. The audience fed off the band and the band, in turn, fed off the increasingly ramped-up crowd. It got to be a major healing love fest, with peeps jumping up in sponanteous repeated standing O's.

Below, Abe's beautiful wife Christine was at the gig tonight. After the show, I collared them to get 'em to jump up on stage in the lighting sweet spot and shot this pic below.

They are the sweetest people.

Not just a whole lot of the newer tunes tonight (I guess 'cuz of all the subbing lately), but they did stomp the fool out of their new arrangement of "Wishing Well," which turned the whole crowd into a bunch of gyrating muppets, the groove was so irresistibly nasty.

After Abe had lit the place up with "Higher Ground," Michael continued launching the night (while we vamped for Jerry's arrival from Wayne Brady) singing his original "Sit Down and Shut Up," and then "You Don't Know Me" from the Santa Fe 2007 live CD. BTW- Michael starts a new gig at the very cool Ovation room in the Green Valley Ranch on May 2nd. Fridays and Saturdays, 6 pm - 9 pm. Gonna have a 12-piece lineup with a 3 piece horn section. I'll be out there to cover that, hope to see a lot of you there.

The Lopez threw down a guitar ride in the Beatles' "Come Together" that brought the house to its feets. He went all Old School Hendrix at the climax. Made me wanna burn one, man. LOL!

It was a magical night, gotta say. OK, it's 3:31 a.m., I'm now just gonna upload a cascade of shots from the gig, in random order. Takes a while -- blogger.com only lets you post five at a time. Tedious. But, here we go (BTW- I managed to get individual shots of all the Fat City Horns cats this time).

Above: Stevie! Runnin' the Front of House just fine.

Above, one of Phil's sax students, Julian. Cat threw down mighty nice.

Above: Rocco Prestia in the House! Below, Kelly, Clint, and David.

Yeah, I was busy tonight. Got lots more keeper shots too, but they're pretty close compositionally to these that I've posted, so no point in putting up redundant stuff (and it's after 4 a.m., and I'm gettin' whupped).

JUST IN:

Got an email a few minutes ago from Nelson Sardelli. Looks like the Norman Kaye benefit raised more than $17,000. That is simply miraculous, given the short lead time. Yes!

UP AT THE CRACK OF NOON, TUESDAY

Well, given that the phone has rung four times starting at 8 a.m., and my dogs have been episodically flippin' out (as is their Jones), and my neighbor's remodeling crew are over next door still sawing loudly away (going on three weeks now), I've actually been up since ten, after hitting the sack at 4:15.

Ugh.

Looking back in my iPhoto dump of last night's shots from the gig, I can see about two dozen more that would make the cut. You live for nights like that behind the lense. How 'bout one more?