[ATTENDED: August 2, 2024] Stick Men
About a year and a half ago I saw Stick Men for the first time and it was fantastic.
I was able to get up close to the stage to see Tony Levin (the main reason I wanted to go) play the Chapman Stick up close. I have seen him play with King Crimson but have never been THIS close. I didn’t know much about Markus Reuter, who also plays a kind of Stick–his own U8 Touch guitar. But wow, he was amazing. And he made playing these crazy complicated song so easy. And I can’t forget Pat Mastoletto, who I’ve seen several times playing drums with King Crimson. He’s amazing to watch, but I laughed to myself at what an amazing show this was if he was the least interesting thing on stage.
I enjoyed the show so much last time and I was really looking forward to this show as well. The lineup was the same as last time. And I was able to get nice and close.
I don’t know many of their actual songs. And it doesn’t matter. They mostly play instrumentals that are complicated and fantastic to watch. Much like saying you could listen to a favorite singer sing the phone book–whatever the instrumental equivalent is, I was happy to watch it.
In fact, they opened this show with a relatively brief impov–almost a warm up–and it was fun to see them noodling on their instruments. But it tunrs out that they played ten of the same songs as last time (in a different order) and that actually worked out really well, because recognized them from last time, so it was even more fun knowing what was coming next.
They started with Cusp. Reuter’s guitar is so fascinating because he holds it upright like a cello and both hands are just moving all over the fretboard. Like a Chapman Stick but shaped like a guitar. For this song, he was playing most of the bass line while Tony played lead on the Stick.
They followed it with the title track from their new EP Brutal–it was great–very heavy and rocking and featuring Tony going “uh!” (more…)
I Just Read About That... 