Bone Fest

[Johnny L]

Saw Slide Hampton's all-star bone fest at the Blue Note last week. The bassist was playing a fretless electric rather than a double bass, but he was still fantastic, as were all the performers.

It was too hard to play "critic" and complain about intonation and tempos and such, as I couldn't keep my head from swinging with the music.

How do you NYC guys stand it having so much wonderful talent up there?

[Johnny L]

I didn't have a clue who Slide Hampton was when I was there...it just seemed like the right thing to do, and I wasn't really interested in checking out the Village Vanguard with Bob Dylan not being featured and all.

Wouldn't you know, as I come back from the library with the Brahms Violin Conterto ready to spin and getting knocked out, again, by one of Brahm's compositions and the folks pulling it off, I go through the free downloads from the Abersold website and voila, Slide Hampton is mentioned as a fantastic soloist with heroic articulation abilities and given a "preferred listening" label. No one would hear me disagree.

Wonder if Abersold has a circular breathing articulation hall-of-fame as well?