Town Hall, NYC January 11 2003
(reviewed by Ben Kramer)
Prior to the concert, I spent a few hours in the city just hanging out. I got myself one of those all day Metrocards and me and my brother just hung out in NYC. We went to the large Tower Records downtown, and I realized that I had never been in a CD store before this one. All of the others were little boutiques that weren’t much larger than a flea market booth compared to this giant. This store had absolutely EVERYTHING. And when I say everything, I am not kidding around. You want it, there is a 99.999999% chance that they got it. Anyway, we left there, broke of course, and went to Town Hall, the location of the concert. It got pretty frightening when two huge black guys began fighting while we were waiting for the L-Train. Actually, that was pretty stupid of us to take the L-Train. For those of you who don’t know NY’s subway system, you won’t understand this, but I’ll say it anyway. We too the #6 north to Union Square, then took the L to 14th street and then the 2 to Times Square. Of course, we ended up waiting 15-minutes for the L, and we could have walked it in three minutes, so I’ve certainly learned my lesson. Anyway, we got to Town Hall at about 7:50, 10 minutes before the concert was supposed to begin. It didn’t begin until 8:15, but I guess that’s expected. Al and his band came on, and put on one of the finest shows I have ever heard or seen.
Up until this point, I hadn’t heard Al Di Meola live. I have heard a dozen or so of his studio albums, many of which are fantastic, but I hadn’t heard Al strut his speed in concert. Furthermore, not only had I not heard him live, but I had no idea what to expect. Would he be performing his fusion material from the late 1970’s (Which is really rock and roll. It’s just classified as fusion because of Al’s involvement with Return To Forever, a fusion band. To me it sounds like rock, but the so-called experts can call it whatever they want.)? What about his 80’s material, which is toned down in terms of energy, but the technicalities are still there. His World Sinfonia material, which can be extremely different than anything Al’s ever done (Especially The Grande Passion)? His Astor Piazzolla material, where he plays the songs of his biggest influence? And the list can go on from there! The point is, Al could have done so many things with a two-hour and 15-minute concert, and as it turned out, he did. Al plays songs from each one of his eras, from the shockingly energetic and technically brilliant debut, Elegant Gypsy, to his latest release, Flesh On Flesh, which I have yet to hear. So Al played something for everyone, and fortunately, it seemed like he was playing everything for me.
Don’t get me wrong, I had high expectations for an Al Di Meola concert. His unique, yet startling ability on guitar is the most obvious reason for this. However, as I listened to this concert, I realized that Al’s general technique may stay the same for every type of music he decides to do, but the way in which he expresses himself changes, and there is no doubt that there was a high level of emotion in his playing, particularly when he played something that was influenced by Astor Piazzolla. So it is definitely impressive that Al was able to play so flawlessly throughout this concert, especially on his 10-minute improvisation period where he and one of his two drummers (Who’s name I can’t remember at this point in time.) kind of went back and forth arguing with each other instrumentally. Actually, that part of the concert is especially memorable to me, because of the hilarious and timely outbursts of screaming by the drummer. Then there was Al himself, who fooled the audience into thinking that he’s ended the song, and after a five or ten-second break he’d continue. Al’s playing also impressed me on ‘Race With Devil On Spanish Highway’. I don’t know how he did it, but he was able to synchronize with BOTH drummers in this piece, and play it faster than the original. If you’ve heard it, you probably know that this is very impressive because of the nature of the piece. For those of you that don’t know it, well, you’re just gonna have to take my word for it.
Yet not only is the playing great, (By his whole band actually, and I’m not sure if I’ve ever heard a live concert where the band is playing better than this, either on CD or when actually seeing a concert.) but like I said above, the expression and emotion blew me away too. The songs he played off of World Sinfonia may not be my favorite Di Meola songs, but I believe that he improved them in concert. He opens with one of the Piazzolla tango suites, and he gets so deeply into it that it’s almost as if the audience isn’t there. Eventually there would be audience involvement (On ‘Race With Devil On Spanish Highway’, his encore.) but you could tell he was playing for himself. Most guitarists you see live aren’t paying too much attention to what’s being played. I mean, what do they care if they screw up a couple notes in concert? The Who did it on Leeds and Wight, so aren’t they entitled to it? Well, I really don’t have an opinion on this, but Al certainly does, and if he’s going to play live, he’s going to play his material the way it should be played. So the tango’s he performs (Astor Piazzolla is known for his tangos.) are technically flawless, and the guitar part doesn’t change. The keyboards, and bass (This guy’s name I do remember, and that’s because I had heard him play before. The name…Anthony Jackson.) are different than the performance on World Sinfonia. Sure, the major change is in dynamics, but I think a couple of the pieces Al opens his show off with might be better than the originals.
After a couple of tangos and World Sinfonia tracks, he moves on to do one from his latest release, Flesh On Flesh. Now I haven’t heard this album yet, but hearing one of the songs from it (I was concentrating on the music so much that I didn’t remember the name of this one either.) makes me want to hear it more than ever. Then again, I want to hear all of Al's stuff, but that’s because I think the man’s a genius who blah blah blah…okay enough of that. The song fucking ruled, dig? Up next, Al performed ‘Misterio’, the opening track from his second World Sinfonia release, The Grande Passion. Not only is The Grande Passion my favorite Al Di Meola album (And one of my all time favorite albums!), but ‘Misterio’ is my favorite piece by Al. He must have almost doubled the original eight minutes, but time seemed to be the last thing on my mind, as well as Al and his band’s. Every one of the 12, or 14, or 15, or whatever minutes was unbelievably majestic. Never in my life had I imagined that Al could actually pull this off live. Special thanks goes to his keyboardist, who I think was Mario Parmisano, his World Sinfonia keyboardist. Sure, the opening may have been played on a synthesizer as opposed to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, but he is able to capture Al’s original effect with something you might find on a Phil Collins album. His keyboard work throughout the entire song was outstanding as well, and it’s a shame Al couldn’t get a couple of violins to participate. Now that would have made the evening perfect, or dare I say more perfect than it originally was. After that point I changed seats. My brother, who accompanied me to this concert, had run off to the bathroom and discovered that sitting higher up (Not much higher, that would have been physically impossible.), in the last row, would provide an infinitely better view, plus less of a crowd to deal with. So we sat there for the next two songs, and then there was an intermission.
After the intermission, rather than continuing the trend of working in reverse chronological order, Al does a couple of newer songs, including that long guitar solo I mentioned above. That one, as far as I know, isn’t actually on any of his albums, but I enjoyed it immensely anyway. Towards the end though, he eventually went back to some older stuff and played a few pieces from his first four albums, which are basically identical to each other in style. These may have been aimed at pleasing the crowd, but hey, I’m a part of the crowd at this concert. I was an Al Di Meola fan surrounded by other Al Di Meola fans. Sure, the older stuff sold better, and although you won’t hear any of them on a classic rock station, many of the pieces certainly have that tone that comes with a radio hit. Anyway, I really enjoyed the playing on the Casino material (Actually, I didn’t hear that album until the next day. But I knew what Al was playing.), and especially the Elegant Gypsy material. Of course, that’s my third favorite fusion album up until this point, and my third favorite Di Meola album. He didn’t do anything that wasn’t expected of him, though he did play the stuff extremely well. It was just so impressive how he was able to play these fast pieces so elegantly and flawlessly. The entire last fourth of the concert was comprised of songs from the first four albums, even the encore, which I think should have been ‘Race With Devil’, but it wasn’t. Well, he at least played it from the same album, which is great, because, well, Elegant Gypsy is amazing, and ‘The Elegant Gypsy Suite’, Al’s encore, was no exception.
So this show was out of this world, definitely worth the $33 buck I paid for them. The concert convinced me to pick up some live Di Meola stuff, and quite frankly, I’m not dazzled by his live albums the way I am by this concert. So if he’s coming to town and you’ve got a few bucks lying around, go see Al, because he’s a damn fine performer, and like he said after his guitar solo improvisation, "Don’t expect me to do that 10 years from now". But I certainly cannot deny that at 48, Al is still the king of fusion, and one of the finest guitarists the music world has ever seen. Come back soon Al!!!!