This
family is on a roll. Last night I
got them all to go see live music again.
We’ve family friends who invited us to dinner and I knew they’d go see
some music at the drop of a hat.
Looked on line. Was hoping
for some live bebop, but rather I came across this:
“The Nightcrawlers is possibly
the only authentic Chicago blues band in mainland China.”
Hmm.
Intriguing. But how
true? Hard to verify. I looked for some links to the band
elsewhere but came up with nothing. Looked around for alternatives but nothing
else really seemed promising.
Fine. Blues. I’ve played the girls enough old blues
around the kitchen in the morning.
Even if they’re schlocky it will be a descent lesson in
discernment.
We had dinner at one of these “newer” French restaurants
that are springing up across town.
This one specializes in steak.
If I cook stake rare or medium rare at home it’s dead on arrival with
the Mrs. Sometimes if you view a large piece of meat served on a plate with a
knife and fork in hand through Chinese eyes it can seem a bit barbaric. Bloody, all the more so. So this place was smart, they offered
patrons photos of the meat prepared at different percentages of cooking. My wife and daughter all ordered “well
done!” out of habit and I the rare.
Then later my friends laughed when the well-done pair complained that their meat was very
tough. Here, try a piece of this .
. . “oh, wow, I see.”
We made our way across town with a faulty mapping app and a
call to the venue. It’s over by
Jiaodaokou in the Dongcheng district, which is precisely where my wife and I
lived about fifteen years ago.
Miraculously we found a parking place in the hutong and filed into to smoky, dim lit joint. I know my older daughter (13) had
really enjoyed the Ray Lema show, I’d written about, though it was a more
civilized environment. Quickly she
complained once and then again about the smoke.
It dawned on me that these poor kids have no experience
really, with a smoke filled environment.
This is, a good thing.
They’ll live longer. And if
you’ve no experience with it, it must be a drag. All the adults at the table conferred that their parents had
all smoked when we were kids. And
up until a few years ago, nearly anywhere you’d go in the world, people would
smoke. It’s banned in most places
in Beijing, but clubs still seem to be acceptable. And if you’re like me you just deal and reckon with the fact
that your clothes smell like nicotine, in the morning. But my daughter went to a back room
section, to escape the 乌烟瘴气[1] and sat alone
at a booth where we could still see here, We-chatting with her friends.
And in so doing she missed, or compromised her viewing of a
very solid blues performance.
Rhythm section was tight, harp player could blow, and the lead guitarist
was badass. Before I knew it I was
yelling things out loud, which is arguably what you want to have happen to you
at a blues show. The guitarists
rendition of the Freddie King classic “Hideaway” was delicious. That’s a mighty demanding number, that
Clapton famously copied and this gent had it down, note for note and then some.
My only critique on this gent, whose name is apparently WeiWei, was that should
have turned up louder when he solo’d.
I could hear him, but I wanted to feel a tube-amp sound push me back and
cut me open. He had the chops to
do so, but not the amplitude. The
drummer, who is apparently the Chicago anchor of the squad, with some notable
blues pedigree, was a bit understated on the vocals but all and all, we were
digging it. You get a chance to
see them, I bet you’ll dig the Nightcrawlers.
Here is the only other thing I could find about these earthworms, searching on
line, for the same show we saw, in CitiWeekend.
The drummer, Tom Wilson, is a
Chicago town Blues veteran. He has played and toured with major players from
America's blues capital. He has
shared the stage with the likes of: Junior Wells, Hubert Sumlin, John Lee
Hooker, Willy Dixon, Koko Taylor, Luther Allison, Buddy Guy, Otis Rush, James
Cotton and the Muddy Waters legendary blues band among others. He lays down a shuffle beat that is the
epitome of Chicago blues rhythm . His steady shuffle, mojo and jungle beats
have been a driving force for many of Americas top blues acts for over
thirty-five years. He is now joining forces with harmonica wizard Claudio,
guitar master WeiWei and bassman Wang Zheng.
Now listen here.
South Korea has all sorts of remarkable, punch-above-their-weight
prowess for technology, media and potentially for geopolitics. And you can’t be that way without
stepping on some toes now and then.
But let’s get one thing straight, LG, leave the Palisades alone, would
you? If you want to build a tall
building, build it in Manhattan or even Newark for God’s sake, but those cliffs
are sacred. Build something flashy
there, piss enough people off and its gonna come back to bite you. I’m telling you. How is that Chris Christy on the right
and Corry Booker on the left all have nothing to say? It’s enough to make you wish for an intervention from the
Dear Leader.
[1] wūyānzhàngqì: foul black smoke atmosphere (idiom); fig. everything in a
tremendous mess / pandemonium reigns
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