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Terrapin Crossroads presents the Everyone Orchestra with Phil Lesh and Friends the Grate Room at Terrapin Crossroads 100 Yacht Club Drive, San Rafael, CA 94901 USA 8:00 PM, Friday, December 1, 2017
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[8:08 PM lights down, announcements from Matt, band out]
[10:03 PM lights down, band out for more]
If you don't already know, Everyone Orchestra is an improvised music happening facilitated by Matt Butler, with an ever-changing cast of participants. I'm pretty sure that tonight was my first EO experience, though I certainly saw more than a few shows by Matt back in the Jambay days.
So the setlist above? Well, with collective improvisation as the rule, everything is new (except for the bit about experienced musicians recycling those years of practice into the momentary NOW). As the show went down, I jotted brief notes above – then tried to make sense out of things a day or two later. I suppose that strategy is good enough, though in retrospect, I wish I'd written more: it's easier to write about the impression made my a recent performance of familiar songs than to recall what was exciting and noteworthy about something totally new.
Overall, it was great fun. I think the cast did a great job of going with whatever feel that Matt was projecting, meaning that we ended up with a decently good variety of tunes (slow, fast, funky, bluesy, dancier, etc), and trying to contribute to overall flow more than to show off any particularly flashy notions that happened to manifest in their hands or lips.
Phil seemed to enjoy himself pretty well, but as noted above, he only stuck around for one set. Bummer about that! There's nothing wrong with Connor's more traditional approach to the bass role, and it probably fit even better in the dance party context that Matt was stirring up, but given the choice, I would have rather heard another hour of lead bass from our host.
I was also pretty knocked out with the contributions from Al and Vinnie. Makes me think that I should have tried harder to see moe. more often over the past twenty years! Too late for that now!
I'd be curious to hear from folks who attended the Saturday night gig: did it work for them too?
Back to the previous event! ☸ Up to the 2017 yearbox! ☸ Up to the 2017 event list! ☸ On to the next event!