Tony Monaco
Live October 5, 2007
Organ Jazz Club
Tony Monaco - Organ
Daisuke Kawai - Organ
Tommy Campbell - Drums
Haruhiko Takeuchi - Guitar
This is a hard review to write. My leg was pumping too much to take any notes during the show! Not even the most serious jazz writer wants to be scratching around writing things down when the music is cranked to these levels of funky, smoking grooves. The exuberance these four musicians displayed at the recently opened Organ Jazz Club was quintessential Hammond B3. The last night of Tony Monaco's first Japan tour, it was hard to say who was more stoked, the band or the standing-room only crowd.
Kawai kicked off the evening with "Girl from Ipanema," but that and Monaco's vocal rendition of "Come to Love" would be the only time the band would slow down. The rest of the evening was full-on, greasy, hot Hammond B3, cooked up on the club's vintage model along with a brand-new prototype brought straight from the Hammond factory for the evening. The two organists fiddled with the settings for a fantastic display of sound that ran from gutsy to velvety and back again.
The evening got down to raw basics after the opening, let's say calibrating, tunes. Diving straight into Jimmy Smith and great classic B3 stompers, the trio/quartet jammed and soloed wildly. "O.G.D.", (organ-guitar-drums), is a must-play tune that the quartet dug into with gusto, the two organs pumping together turning it into a "Double O and G.D." "The Champ" closed the first set with riff after riff of pure funky joy, Monaco shouting, "Yeah! THAT's organ!" His yelp got to the point of the evening better than any review could.
The bluesy "Chicken Shack" and a cool, relaxed "Mac the Knife" started to open up more and more space for Takeuchi and Campbell to let their magic rise a little higher. Takeuchi's guitar opened up into funkier and funkier solos, while Campbell kept the rhythm equal parts driving ahead and unexpectedly splintered into rhythmic subtleties. Campbell plays with all four limbs, draping a Latin clave over funky throb and nimble cymbal over ceaseless swing. Takeuchi's guitar work sharpened the sound with countervailing rhythms and crunchy and shiny tones both. Since the trio (without Monaco) often plays around town together, they had no trouble greasing the wheels before shifting into higher gear.
Still, Monaco's playing was the center of the evening and he had no trouble taking up the reins of the dual keyboard with full-fisted force. He literally "socked" the bass notes, having to keep pulling his shoe back on, to the audience's delight, after each song. As Kawai explained, socks let him really feel the wood of the bass pedals. Everyone else felt the bass pounding right into their chest.
The final encore, a vamp in C, cooked fiercely, with funky lines traded back and forth all over the place, the two organs heating up higher and higher. And unlike most clubs, where restraint tends to be the rule, the crowd kept yelling for more, even in the middle of the song. They knew the evening was a special, very B3 one. "Tony," as the crowd kept yelling out, will hopeful be back very soon. Won't you Tony?
October 10, 2007