You've got the music in you

So.

A momentous week.

About 3 weeks ago Kait walked in and said 'there's a concert at Carnegie Hall with The Flaming Lips and Patti Smith, wanna go?' and Wave and myself said 'yes yes we do'. And then I mostly forgot about it until Thursday when I woke up thinking 'I am going to see Patti Smith perform today'.....ZIIIINNNGGGG!

It's been a quiet week largely because this gig cost $37.00 and I can normally stretch that over a week and a weekend if necessary. So that's the one big expenditure for the week leaving me with nothing much to do...but that's ok. It was so worth it!

The concert was a benefit for Tibet House US

Tibet House US is dedicated to preserving Tibet’s unique culture at a time when it is confronted with extinction on its own soil. By presenting Tibetan civilization and its profound wisdom, beauty, and special art of freedom to the people of the world, we hope to inspire others to join the effort to protect and save it. Tibet House US is part of a worldwide network of Tibetan institutions committed to ensuring that the light of the Tibetan spirit never disappears from the face of this earth.

The artistic director was composer Philip Glass, who also acted as MC for the night.

I won't talk through the whole thing but here's my highlights:

James McCartney. Opening act. He has a great voice, and looks atonishingly like Paul - the Playbill had a section about each artist, and his made me laugh because it was like they were trying so hard to say 'he has inherited his talent from his father' without actually going 'PAUL MCCARTNEY PAUL MACCARTNEY'. Poor guy - he's been gigging most of his life under a pseudonym, can't blame him. Father's shadow and all that.

Anyway. Then we had the fabulous Angelique Kidjo, a Beninoise singer-songwriter, named 'Africa's premier Diva' by Time magazine. She has covered some rad songs, such as 'Gimme Shelter', the Stones' greatest song. Her voice is beautiful and she gave an awesome performance, v. glad to have discovered her.

She was followed by Tenzin Choegyal, a native from Tibet who grew up in India and now lives in Australia - WOW OH WOW, he sang 2 of his own Tibetan-inspired songs, played on a dranyen (a traditional long-necked lute). His voice was something else, I completely drifted away listening to him. I insist you watch this video so you can hear what I'm talking about, live was incredible.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-JyOIsuMcw&feature=related Copy and paste link into browser. The flute at the beginning is beautiful but his singing starts at about 3.56.

Then some other stuff happened...all fab but I don't remember exactly who what where. There was Taj Mahal who is big big big on the blues circuit, he performed a beautiful song for which he brought out his daughter to duet, and then did a really classic blues number on the piano.

THE ROOTS - ah I love this band. They are totally unique, they are a hip hop group from Philadelphia and there's loads of them but they always play their own live instruments on stage unlike most hip hop and urban artists, they have what has been described by my good friend Matt Parkinson as 'an organic sound' which is funny cos one of their first albums was called Organix. They are great, and they collaborated with a couple of the other artists - they did a cover of Curtis Mayfield's Move On Up with Angelique Kidjo on vocals, and a number with Taj Mahal. And then they finished with this fantastic cover of Down By The River by Neil Young. This video is filmed from a different performance that they gave of this song, also at Carnegie Hall a couple of weeks earlier. The video quality isn't great but hopefully you get the idea. I never realised what frickin talented musicians they are - the drums, the guitar - the vocals! What a voice! The Roots have a dedicated following, they have a lot of integrity which is why they've had a solid, good, long career and will be going strong for a long time to come. But really they deserve to be much bigger than they are. They should be HUGE in fact. But I'm kind of glad they're not cos it could damage them, like it does for so many! This is Neil Young cover. Fab.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baU-HPOUSJo

Then of course we are onto the mighty Flaming Lips. The whole hall went nuts for them, especially all the other young people with us in the cheap seats at the back. Now, I saw The Lips in September, at a small gathering we like to call BESTIVAL avec Mademoiselle Theodora Sutton. It was epic, their full show on the main stage with the lights and confetti cannons, giant hamster balls, crazy screen projections at the back of the stage...fabulous. So was vair interesting to see them stripped back on an indoor stage, no bells and whistles. It was GRRREAT! They played something...I forget...and then their biggest hit 'Do you realise'. What I now realise is how much I love that song, it's very beautiful.
'You realize the sun doesn't go down It's just an illusion caused by the world spinning round' - I love that!
And Wayne Coyne was super cool, as ever. He looks like a classic rock icon from the 70s, which is so my style it's not even funny.

And finally...dun dun DUNNNN the woman we've all been waiting for...PATTI SMITH walked onto the stage for the closing numbers. This woman is too cool for words, so I will not attempt to describe it, just know that she deserves every bit of cred she's earned in her life and hearing her howling that we all have to STAND UP was very inspiring and brought me much joy.
And here's the thing...she just gets cooler as she gets older! She's a living breathing heroine and goddess of punk. She was born in 1946!!!!! The woman's 65! So apparently the secret to growing old is rock 'n roll. Well I always knew that anyway.











After the whole shebang was over we left Carnegie Hall and walked smack bang into Wayne Coyne (Lips frontman) signing autographs. Sadly he didn't have time for me as there was a bus taking him to a party that was about to leave, but I did actually invite him to a party at Loftstel instead. So there, I invited a rockstar to a party, I'm pretty happy with that.

I'm very behind on bloggy things...always busy/tired atm. Will have to do a big catch up, possibly later on today, espesh. since my day began in an interesting manner worth detailing (I think so anyway)

Rock and roll foreverxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx