Lil' Band O' Gold - s/t (listen) My heart was flushed clean with warm swamp water after last night's performance by swamp pop supergroup Lil' Band O' Gold at the Manship Theatre, about which I will be saying more in the forthcoming Record Crate entry, but suffice to say, it was one of the best concerts I've seen in a while, and it couldn't have happened at a better time for me. If all the stars align just right and dotted lines get signed, I will soon be embarking on a very Louisiana music-centric project that will undoubtedly steer the focus of my listening here in that direction.
I thought, oh well, time to put new music ruminations on the back burner and let the minimalists simmer in their own sauce for a while, when in The Promised Land, the swamp pop documentary that preceded the band's performance, I saw a poster on the wall for a joint concert by Lil' Band O' Gold saxophonist Dickie Landry and Philip Glass. The films briefly touches on Landry's avant garde history and, if I heard right, he said something along the lines of "at one point, four out of the six members of the Philip Glass Ensemble were from Lafayette, LA."
Is that really true? Is the crystalline engine of the Philip Glass Ensemble really an old boat motor from Lafayette? One can find commonalities between the reel of Cajun music and the grind of minimalism, but I never thought there might be an actual formal connection. About fifteen years ago, I attended a Philip Glass piano recital in Lafayette and while he was congenial and chatty between songs, I don't remember him mentioning a connection to the city and the music.
Philip Glass - Music with Changing Parts (listen) Here is one of the seminal early Philip Glass recordings on which Mr. Landry contributes "soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone, piccolo, flute, voice."
Pictured below is Dickie Landry, myself, and Warren Storm, legendary swamp pop drummer and singer and possibly the coolest dude that ever walked, just on shirts and mustache alone.
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