First of all, THANKS to Moonbeam for letting me crash on her floor with zero notice after the Asbury Park show was cancelled. If it werent for her generosity, Id have nothing to write about!
In a nutshell, the show ROCKED!!! This was my second Ak & Zuie concert. The first one was in Las Angeles in Sept. 2001.
The concert was in the Lucille ballroom (?) at BB Kings in the heart of NYC. The audience was a mixture of us hard-core fans, and the general public. I noticed during the concert that many of the bar patrons stopped talking and started listening to the performance. Wow, now I know what it takes to get a New Yorker to shut up!
I did not write down the set list but, to me, the actual songs were secondary to the overall effect. The whole was definitely bigger than the sum of the parts.
First of all, let me say that if you have only seen Steve perform with Al, you dont even know the half of it. (All due respect to Al, of course!) Steve is the total package: writer, producer, arranger, and musician. Oh, and he is just as nice as he can be to all us fans. It all came together in NYC last night.
The first half of the gig was Steve (bass) and Pete (drums). If youve heard the CDs, you know that there are just so many layers of sound that it would take a marching band and a symphony orchestra to recreate live. The thing I find amazing is Steve and Pete can translate the smoky, shadowy musical layers from their CDs into a form that can be performed live and somehow still seems deeper than the music coming from just 2 instruments.
Steve was in great voice. Even when hes singing really loud, his voice has an ephemeral quality to it. Plus, he looked as happy as I have ever seen him on stage. It seemed as if he had to will himself to stop smiling long enough to sing a verse or two. Though I couldnt hear what was going on, it seemed like Steve was joking with Pete and Jim throughout the whole show. Everyone on stage was smiling and enjoying themselves.
Steve has a genuine awww shucks attitude and none of the annoying IM A STAR! posturing. You could see it on stage. I thought whenever people applauded, he seemed just the tiniest bit surprised.
I invited my Uncle Steven, a huge jazz fan, to the show. He was blown away. His first question was how come nobody knows about Ak & Zuie. (Well, I dont think **nobody** knows about them, but I understood his point ) My Uncle said that Pete was an excellent drummer. I told him that Pete was the drum tech for Bermuda. So my uncle replies, You mean theres a better drummer out there? I wont get into that debate, but you get what he meant. The tone in his voice was one of absolute shock, putting an even finer point on the subject. (Id like to add that my uncle had no idea who Weird Al was. How could we possibly be related????)
Pete got a lot of applause after a few particularly tricky and well-done drum solos. I also think Petes voice is very compatible with Steves as they harmonized very well.
After the break, Jim joined Steve and Pete on stage. Again, you just do not know Jims talent if you have only seen him looking like Abe Lincoln in Amish Paradise. He also got a lot of applause after a few very cool guitar solos. It looked to me like Jim was reading music before each song (Jim, I apologize if this is wrong!), But when he was jamming, it was absolutely seamless. As if he was the & in Ak & Zuie! The addition of a guitar totally changed the character of the music.
I spoke to Jim after the show and told him that it was just great to hear him just play. With only 3 instruments, I could hear Jim clearly for the first time. It was a real treat. Jim surprised me when he said that what he was having some sort of amplifier problem (I think thats what he said anyway) and that he just went with it because he couldnt fix it. Well, Jim, on our end, whatever came out was fabulous and I couldnt believe that was not what you intended.
Undying the fan!
Tara Lyn
