A high noise-to-musician ratio isn’t hard for many jam bands. Decent noise is another story. The Internet is packed with free performances from groups “breaking the bounds of sound, but truth is a lot of it is similar and gets repetitive fast.
Load the MP3 player with a day’s worth of shows and Keyboardist Marco Benevento and drummer Joe Russo aren’t a new duo, having met in the eighth grade 15 years ago and now performing about 200 shows a year. The description of their material isn’t revolutionary, focusing on “splinter indie rock and jazz with sweepingly efficient arrangements that snap, crackle and pop the fine lines one finds in trying to categorize music. live shows at the Internet Archive, and more paid and free material at their official site www.
organanddrums.com. The 18-song, 2.
3-hour set at Revolution Hall in Troy, N.Y., isn’t necessarily among their best - just the most recent as of this writing.
But it’s a good showcase and features a clean Among those one of the most highly recommended is a Sept. 4, 2004, concert at Snow Ridge Ski Area and, based on a quick listen, I agree it’s a quality listen and perhaps a better introduction for general material when deciding if they’re worth downloading). Also, they frequently play with well-known, top-talent musicians such as saxophonist Chris Potter, John Medeski and Mike Gordon, making a browse Benevento dishes out lead, bass and texture lines in bucketloads - without sampling or overdubbing, he insists.
Perhaps because he fills so many roles he’s crisp on passages from mellow ‘60s funk ballad Russo’s also all over the map - sometimes calming, sometimes maniacal - and arguably he’s better at the former where he has more direction and fewer clichés. On the Revolution Hall’s opening “9X9, for instance, a fast-but-subtle intermittent track feeds Benevento’s triple-threat introductory buildup and allows his highly sparse leads room to speak. The subsequent “Scratchitti gets the hard rock/funk treatment and, while mildly catchy, sounds too much like something any band - including those Moore theme in “New Song ).
Still, the beat-heavy jam mentality is evident and at times they wander “3 Question Marks is frenetic enough, but spends several minutes opening with a rather jumbled The final five songs are instrumental Led Zeppelin covers, apparently a regular thing, featuring Scott Metzger on guitar. They’re generally recognizable with a few twists, and perhaps more evenhanded and enjoyable for new listeners than the high and low points in the originals. Metzger is fine without standing out, if only because so many guitarists cover this material skillfully.
The 13-minute with, but solidly above average in a highly crowded field is nothing to be ashamed about. The density and complexity of their best work is remarkable, which despite some pedestrian material is why further View the on the web. The MP3 files in variable bit-rate quality (recommended) total about 200MB in size.
News RSS