First posted by Jools
Is it possible to be HipGroovySwinginCool
Oct.5 2001
when wearing an electric blue sharkskin suit and snapping your fingers in front of a band that plays with little or no amplifiers? Well DUH, yes. I saw Tony Bennett sing with kd Lang the other night and had my faith in human nature restored and my education into the mysteries of what it means to be truly cool, completed.
The show opened with a jazz trio -- piano, bass and drums jumping straight into a jump-jazz groove -- sparse, spare but swinging; blue lights dampening the stage and drawing focus. Then Tony and kd entered from opposites sides of the stage. Tony, 75 or so still smacks the stage, limber and loose and lit up like 4am in Vegas. Swaying, finger snapping, eyes glazed toward some Italian Heaven as he still dug into the song like it's just another night at the Sands in 1963. I'm sure that during the moments he's on stage and feeling the groove, he still feels like he's in his prime days, and he's probably startled when he leaves the stage and sees in the dressing room mirror that he is a few steps across the casino carpet past 30 years old. Sure Tony's voice has lost a step or two from the old days, but his spirit and delivery are still from the heart, and still rocks with energy. I found my self wishing I were an old SOB too, so I could have heard him when he was a kid, when he was really ripping up the bandstand. I totally understand why my parents and grandparents thought he was "The Man."
Oct.5 2001
when wearing an electric blue sharkskin suit and snapping your fingers in front of a band that plays with little or no amplifiers? Well DUH, yes. I saw Tony Bennett sing with kd Lang the other night and had my faith in human nature restored and my education into the mysteries of what it means to be truly cool, completed.
The show opened with a jazz trio -- piano, bass and drums jumping straight into a jump-jazz groove -- sparse, spare but swinging; blue lights dampening the stage and drawing focus. Then Tony and kd entered from opposites sides of the stage. Tony, 75 or so still smacks the stage, limber and loose and lit up like 4am in Vegas. Swaying, finger snapping, eyes glazed toward some Italian Heaven as he still dug into the song like it's just another night at the Sands in 1963. I'm sure that during the moments he's on stage and feeling the groove, he still feels like he's in his prime days, and he's probably startled when he leaves the stage and sees in the dressing room mirror that he is a few steps across the casino carpet past 30 years old. Sure Tony's voice has lost a step or two from the old days, but his spirit and delivery are still from the heart, and still rocks with energy. I found my self wishing I were an old SOB too, so I could have heard him when he was a kid, when he was really ripping up the bandstand. I totally understand why my parents and grandparents thought he was "The Man."
Tony polished off a duet with kd, "I've got the world on a string," and then left the stage to her and the band. And man, the guy even walks
cool, giving the piano player some kind of side glance and, well, I was going to say a thumbs up. But it was a way subtler flick of the wrist acknowledgement
of groove. A "yes, WE are feeling it tonight, my man" kind of movement. For the first time in my life, I didn't fear growing old -- if only I
can somehow obtain a few nano-ounces of Tony's coolness to guide me to the retirement home.
Tony left the rest of the first set to kd, who sang with a voice as big and stretched out as a dirt road in Montana, flinging herself into the songs and wringing her emotions into a puddle on the stage in the process. She reminds me of Patsy of course, a comparison that kd is probably waaaay tired of hearing. But it can't be avoided. These two women sang/sing with a soul exposed, sliced open so we can feel every hard time, sigh with them at their love affairs and laugh by proxy at their joy in the good times. I've bought her records and marveled at her voice in the past, but this is the first time I'd been present to feel the air move in reverence to her voice. Dang, I could devote an entire chapter in my upcomng book, History of the Groove, part I, on her microphone technique alone.
I walked in to the concert as someone who generally liked her music and walked out a fan, totally immersed in her particular interpretation of what it is to
be human, through the venue of music.
Both Artists returned for a final set of duets. Aging Italian stallion crooner in a sharkskin suit, grooving away with a baggy black suited, barefoot Canadian country girl. But their past meant nothing. It was all about the moment. A moment where two artists of excessively large range of expression, gave a few thousand happy folks a peek into and a tour of their life. Today I'm taking a tour of another kind; through my CD collection, listening to all the singers, male and female, who have giant voices. Tony and kd did their job well. I'm viewing the world differently after being exposed to their gift.
Bill "yeah, baby" Thompson
