In the course of working out a deal on a cab I found out that Stanley is playing all this week at Jazz Alley in downtown Seattle. The band includes Dennis Chambers on drums, so I decided to truck on up there and stay overnight. I live about 4 hours from Seattle if the traffic's good. It wasn't, so I arrived 20 minutes late for seating for the first set.
As I was making a reservation for the late set, the manager walked by and I mentioned how cool it was hearing the band doing a Mingus tune (
Goodbye Porkpie Hat). We get to talking, and he comps me in for the rest of first show. I have to sit at the bar, but the sight lines are perfect there and that would be fine. The hostess has other ideas though, and asks if I'd rather sit "by the drums". This turns out to be 3 feet from Chambers, front row on the side of the stage. I am actually behind D.C., but I can hear everything perfectly and when Stanley and Dennis are jamming Stanley's looking right at me. I get the full fretboard view, and his back is actually to 70% or so of the audience. Wow, I lucked out!
Each set was about 50/50 upright bass and BG. They did
Porkpie twice, a Charlie Parker tune (
Confirmation), one or two RTF ones, and bits of all the famous Stanley tunes:
Lopsy Lu,
School Days,
Hello Jeff, etc. Each encore featured just Stanley and Dennis jamming for about ten minutes. Sweet!
The young guys in the band were great too. I'll have to look up their names, can't remember 'em offhand. The violin player was in the Jean-Luc Ponty mold, the keys kinda reminded me of early Herbie Hancock. That was it, a quartet mixing fusion and trad jazz brilliantly. Stanley has refined his classic tone a little and it was a bit less clanky and spanky than I remember it being back in the day. And his upright work was by far the highlight of the evening for me.
The show was not all that loud, even though Stanley has a monster rig for such a small club. Two 4 X 10s, 2 single 15 cabs. two Alembic preamps, two QSC Powerlight amps, a G-Force floor EFX unit, a micro-synth pedal, and another two-amp SWR rig for the upright.
There are still Jazz Alley shows tonight and tomorrow. I can't recommend going highly enough if you have the chance.
