North Sea Jazz Festival
R'dam, 13 July 2007
The line up for the first night of the NSJ couldn’t fail – Al Green, The Roots, Jamie Lidell and Gym Class Heroes. Add in the fact that none of these clashed and there was the slight chance of sneaking in a glimpse of the lovely Katie Melua (or even engineering a back stage encounter) and you’re set up for a great evening.
After being to confined to venues the size of Paradiso and Melkweg, the cavernous interior of Ahoy rather threw me. It’s one thing to see a band in somewhere intimate, but you need to be really good to fill a big space. Somehow you get the impression that Gym Class Heroes would struggle to fill your living room.
I’ve never been in the situation before of seeing a band just to see them perform their ‘hit’ and I didn’t really like it. Like everybody else, I wanted to see them perform ‘Cupid’s Chokehold’, but I was hoping to be pleasantly surprised along the way. I wasn’t. They performed 5 completely unmemorable songs before dropping the hit, but by that point I was past caring. It’s quite damning that their two best songs depended entirely on samples from MOR hits allied with anodyne rapping.
They were then completely shown up by the best performers in the business – The Roots. If you’ve seen them, you don’t need me to tell you how good they are. If you haven’t, you need to beg, borrow or steal a ticket the next time they hit town. Sadly they didn’t come with Brass Heaven, who they’d been touring the US with, but they did bring sousaphone player Tuba Gooding Jr, who added even more energy and depth to their show. But it was Captain Kirk who really stole the show. When he first started playing with the band a couple of years ago, he was just one amongst many extremely talented musicians. Now he steals the show. Every time. ?uestlove isn’t big on people snitching details about The Root’s performances, to the extent that he doesn’t (officially) sanction the release of performances online until a couple of years after the event, so I won’t go into detail about what he does. But as with every member of the legendary, he gives the best solos I’ve ever seen. Even the drum solos between ?uesto and Frankie Knuckles, which in the hands of lesser mortals are just an exercise in tedium, are unmissable. The only problem is that they never play for long enough (if they played all night it wouldn’t be long enough) and the fact that it’s almost impossible for anyone else to follow them. They’ve got so much soul and passion that anybody else falls flat, even someone of the calibre of Al Green.
Al got off to a slightly rocky start by hollering ‘Good evening Amsterdam’ at the Rotterdam crowd, but his charm and the fact that he’s still got THAT voice meant they were quickly won over. As he regularly threw roses into the crowd and told us how much he loved us, then played ‘let’s stay together’ his status as a legend was enshrined in stone. It’s particularly impressive, especially when you consider another of his contemporaries Sly Stone, also due to play the NSJ, but with tragically less success or coherence.
After a brief, Melua–less pause, it was time to see Jamie Lidell, who I’d been looking forward to seeing as much as anyone else. I’ve been bigging him up to anyone who will listen for the last couple of years, so it was with genuine pleasure that I learned that he was actually popular in the Netherlands. I’ve taken people to see him play, and every time they leave captivated and amazed. But not this time. I’m not sure if it was the late start time, the fact that he altered his set for the Jazz part of the festival or what, but his set was really disappointing. You go and see Jamie because he pushes back boundaries and experiments, that’s what makes him such a compelling and exhilarating performer. But tonight he went too far. He opened with a new song that sounded great, but then he left the crowd behind in a journey to god knows where. It was one of the few times I’ve seen anyone and been crushingly disappointed. A week on, I’m still gutted. I’ll still cop his new album, I’ll still go and see him live, I still believe he’s the greatest thing, since, well, The Roots. But I really hope this isn’t his new direction, otherwise it’s not just me he’ll risk losing.