Bill Frisell - May 6, 2005

The Symphony Center in Chicago is a palatial theater in downtown Chicago. 2,500 seats. And Bill Frisell nearly sold it out.

This concert was unusual in the sense that there was an opener. I have never seen a Bill concert with an opener. The opener was "The Bad Plus." Jeezus, they are incredible! Buy all of their CDs right now. They are a "jazz" piano trio on acid. And they can rock. And they can definitely swing. Amazing. They have extraordinarily wonderful original tunes too. They get attention (or disdain) for the covers they do, but the covers are just the beginning.

When Bill and the Unspeakables came out, the anxiousness seemed to overcome the first number, but it dissipated sometime during the second number. You couldn't miss the huge smile on Bill's face, even from our nosebleed seats.

The Bad Plus are arguably 'more entertaining' than Bill. But Bill's art is heavier. Heck, he's older, too.

The setlist was something like this:

Hymn For Ginsberg
Longish Medley Of A Few Tunes From Unspeakable
Subconscious Lee
Another Unspeakable Medley
Encore: What The World Needs Now.

The set felt short. But the time likely just flew by. It was probably 65 minutes. The medleys were at least 20 mins each.

"Hymn For Ginsberg" sounded much more pronounced to me than it did on the 858 tour. I think it had to do with Tony's bowed bass part ... It seems it was just left out of the arrangement when the 858 quartet toured. And Bill played some totally extraordinary backwards doodly guitar loopage all over it all, and on nearly all of the other numbers, but in a way that was perfectly complimentary. He seemed to be getting the right combinations of sounds throughout the show. Very tasteful. Not too diddly.

Bill was dressed head to toe in black. During the second number, when the concert shifted from anxious, full-on straightaway into kick-ass, Bill stomped on his rat and turned in one of the gnarliest melt-your-face-off-with-a-giant-nucular-blowtorch solos I've ever heard him play. (I probably say that every time.) But seriously, he's added a few techniques to his bag of tricks. Firstly, he did this thing where he played some unusual harmonics up and down the strings. Bill has always done this. But these were new. He's been exploring it more. You'd have to hear it, to know precisely what I mean. Secondly, Bill is exploring dynamic kinds of picking techniques in a more pronounced way. He played down by the bridge so his pick was practically right on the saddles. It was the kind of thing that John Scofield does all the time, but Bill sounds like he's been
listening to all those county/bluesy telecaster guys that do it, and injecting it into his style. Think of a tone that says, "shut the hell up, beeyotch, or I'll slap ya.” The very pronounced Boubacar influence that Bill has had in the last few years is fading away and it seems to me like it's being replaced by Roy Buchanan or even Hendrix (again).

Everybody got down during this show. Jenny, Hank, and Eyvind played very righteous solos and drew enormous applause. Kenny channeled Sly and the Family Stone circa 1969. Tony did this shuffle move all night long. If you had looked at a muted video of only Tony, you'd think that maybe he was playing with Funkadelic, or the Meters, ... Or Black Sabbath.

This concert was also unusual in the sense that large portions of the audience got up and just left during the show, ... we're talking ... in droves. It wasn't just because the hall was so big and therefore there were simply a larger number of "leavers." It was like maybe 30% of the audience had nothing on their minds other than "Grammy. Newspaper recommendation. Oops. Let's go. Doesn't sound like 'jazz' (lower case) at all. Let's go back home and watch 'Survivor'." I overheard the guys behind me inanely remarking about how the tunes were "too different from each other."

Before the encore, Bill said

“I’d like to play a protest song now ... due to the way things are going ... and that probably sounds pretentious or something ... But sometimes I just get to feeling really sad about it all."

"What The World Needs Now" was played slower and more forcefully than he has played it before. It was very nice, with all of the players playing harmony on it, in a dirge-like fashion. It actually gave it a more "hopeful" quality, if you think of it like a statement, as Bill politely intended it to be thought of.

Unspeakable will tour later this year, with Hal Willner. This thing is going to evolve, and no doubt, improve. Lordy. But I already done had my face torched off on Friday.