STANLEY CLARKE
At Wiggins Park (Jazz Festival Series) -
Camden, NJ (6/30/03)
NOTE: SPECIAL THANKS TO
BOB DAVIS (of SOUL-PATROL.COM) FOR THE SNAPSHOTS!!!
Jazz bass legend STANLEY CLARKE graced his hometown
(Philly) fans with a superb-funky concert at Wiggins Park, on the Camden, NJ
waterfront. It was around 8:20pm that the concert began with some of the
funkiest "rhythm guitar-like" bass riffs ever heard on earth by the
amazing STANLEY!!! The second song was a very good rendition of Janet Jackson's
"Funny How Time Flies (When You're Havin' Fun)". The next song was
more of a jazz selection with some jazz-influenced keyboards by Nick Smith and
some tight drummingby Gerry Brown.
Stanley Clarke began to introduce his musicians.........here are the
highlights:
1. The violinist, Mads Tolling, was absolutely in a whole
'nother zone with some crazed, fast-paced string riffs!!
2. Bassist Armand Sabal-Lecco was a fierce super-funk bass
machine with some insane thumpin' and pluckin'.....think of most bass players
BUT ON CRACK!!! (TM Stevens, are you there?) The brother was so fierce that he
had to stop for a second to take a breath (and re-adjust his guitarstrap),
before going back into his psychotic bass romp. Soon, Stanley joined in and it
was just too, too much for some funkateers to handle!!!
3. Keyboardist Eric Carter played a lot of different
synthesized sounds......phasers, hi-frequency noises, turntable scratches, and
spacey/cosmic synthesizer riffs!!
4. Gerry Brown was an unstoppable force on the drums!!
"Lopsy Lou" had a great drum ending, while "Goodbye Pork Pie
Hat" featured Mads on some more fierce violin stuff.........it was so
fierce that one of the strings on his stick popped!!Stanley brought out the
bass cello for his next song, "Touch"....this guy was doing some
seriously fast & funky, heavy-handed pluckin' and thumpin' on the cello!!! "School Days" was an absolute winner....some funky
stuff with a rock tinge. (Stanley doin' some rock???!) with some funky
guitar-type rocking by the amazing Stanley!!
It was time for the encore and that song
was................................"Mothership Connection
(Starchild)"!!!!! THAT'S RIGHT FANS, IT WAS TIME FOR THE P-FUNK, BABY
BABA!! It was so good, just like the original track, with the band locking in
on the groove tighter than a 16-year-old female virgin!! As a bonus, Stanley
and Armand started throwin' down on a different groove called "Do That
Stuff" (another P-Funk goodie). Many fans were singing the chorus of
"Mothership Connection" but (from where I was standing) only I was
singing the refrain of "Do That Stuff" ("I wanna go back and
get...more of that funky stuff! I gotta get some more of that....more of that
funky stuff!")
The fun was over at 9:50pm.
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