K-OS at the McInnes Room, Halifax
Oct. 22nd, 2006 12:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
iamomCanadian hip-hop supastar K-OS (Knowledge-Of Self) played tonight at the Dalhousie Student Union Bldg with a full band comprised of guitar, bass, drums, percussion, DJ, and keyboards. It was by any measure a powerful show, and a good one. Fantastic jumping beats, great friendly hippie dancing vibe, and an old McGill Music classmate of mine name Maury LeFoy playing some truly fonky bass all night long.
My anecdote about Maury LeFoy (who has also played on Sarah Harmer recordings) has to do with my audition for McGill when I was 18. I flew to Montreal to audition for the Jazz Studies Programme in person, and Maury, along with a great pianist named Tilden Webb, were the accompanists the school provided for my audition. I'd never met them before that day, though.
My first tune was a B-flat blues called Tenor Madness. In Calgary, where I was from, if you called a B-flat blues at a nightclub, you were just as likely to get a IV-V-I standard delta blues than you were a standard jazz or bebop blues, which is peppered with II-V7-I progressions and features a tonicization of the II chord leading up to the last 4 bars of the form.
I gave Maury and Tilden each a lead sheet for them to follow along with me on that tune. A chart for Tenor Madness, which is such a hoary old bebop standard that practically every jazz musician on Earth could play it, although I didn't know that at the time. I even made a point of telling them that I liked to play the changes on the blues where you play a II-V7-I turnaround to the II chord near the end of the form. And they looked at me politely, albeit a bit strangely, and nodded.
I was taken aback when they didn't appear even to glance at the lead sheets I'd provided them. Were they going to screw this up? Who are these guys, anyway? If I get to that part and they don't play the changes right, what am I gonna do?
Of course, as I didn't know at the time, Maury and Tilden were (and are) killer jazz musicians, arrangers and composers in their own right at that time. And lesser guys would have either looked down on me for insulting them with those lead sheets, or tease me mercilessly about it when I came to the school next year. But they were always really gracious about that, and we were always really friendly to each other after that.
I considered trying to get backstage to see him and say hi, but I'm not really sure that he'd remember me. If he didn't remember me, I wouldn't want to embarrass myself by trying to explain who I am... :)
At any rate, that was a heavy, great show. I have lots of constructive criticism for K-OS's performing, especially near the end, but overall it was a very tight set (85 min long), very high-energy with totally heavy, real hip-hop beats; the real deal, with real live musicians -- the best! -- it was fantastic.
Good dancing, too! That whirling dervish I met named Lolita with the waist-long dreads and the rag cotton dress tripped me out hardcore too, with her spinning. It was wild, watching her turn around and around and around. She had that legit hippie thing down for real -- no frontin' by her, no how.
My anecdote about Maury LeFoy (who has also played on Sarah Harmer recordings) has to do with my audition for McGill when I was 18. I flew to Montreal to audition for the Jazz Studies Programme in person, and Maury, along with a great pianist named Tilden Webb, were the accompanists the school provided for my audition. I'd never met them before that day, though.
My first tune was a B-flat blues called Tenor Madness. In Calgary, where I was from, if you called a B-flat blues at a nightclub, you were just as likely to get a IV-V-I standard delta blues than you were a standard jazz or bebop blues, which is peppered with II-V7-I progressions and features a tonicization of the II chord leading up to the last 4 bars of the form.
I gave Maury and Tilden each a lead sheet for them to follow along with me on that tune. A chart for Tenor Madness, which is such a hoary old bebop standard that practically every jazz musician on Earth could play it, although I didn't know that at the time. I even made a point of telling them that I liked to play the changes on the blues where you play a II-V7-I turnaround to the II chord near the end of the form. And they looked at me politely, albeit a bit strangely, and nodded.
I was taken aback when they didn't appear even to glance at the lead sheets I'd provided them. Were they going to screw this up? Who are these guys, anyway? If I get to that part and they don't play the changes right, what am I gonna do?
Of course, as I didn't know at the time, Maury and Tilden were (and are) killer jazz musicians, arrangers and composers in their own right at that time. And lesser guys would have either looked down on me for insulting them with those lead sheets, or tease me mercilessly about it when I came to the school next year. But they were always really gracious about that, and we were always really friendly to each other after that.
I considered trying to get backstage to see him and say hi, but I'm not really sure that he'd remember me. If he didn't remember me, I wouldn't want to embarrass myself by trying to explain who I am... :)
At any rate, that was a heavy, great show. I have lots of constructive criticism for K-OS's performing, especially near the end, but overall it was a very tight set (85 min long), very high-energy with totally heavy, real hip-hop beats; the real deal, with real live musicians -- the best! -- it was fantastic.
Good dancing, too! That whirling dervish I met named Lolita with the waist-long dreads and the rag cotton dress tripped me out hardcore too, with her spinning. It was wild, watching her turn around and around and around. She had that legit hippie thing down for real -- no frontin' by her, no how.
