When you make a cake, can you taste the eggs?
That’s what my parents used to say about a really good band, about how they fit together: that it wasn’t about any one soloist, no matter how big a name or how important. So whenever I hear a group, particularly a headliner, introduced as “[insert main name here] & the [other musicians]” I become vaguely curious as to how it might turn out. Headliners are after all, headliners for a reason, usually the big name is the soloist and the rest of the group ends up being well…backing.
Tonight’s show though, I was looking forward to for many many reasons – most of which will be explained shortly. I had no idea what I was in for however.
This group, was not just about the headliner, though the headliner was incredible, this was the ultimate example of the whole being so much more than the sum of its parts. A violinist – no, call him what he was – a gypsy fiddler – who played with such passion that he was sawing through bow strings every five minutes (no really, he was, every so often he’d just look at his bow, notice that were strands loose, mutter something and bite them off, and keep playing), a drummer who could do more with his hands than I’ve seen most drummers do with sticks and brushes, a guitarist whose fingers moved in such a blur that you couldn’t even see them most of the time, and an upright bassist who literally danced as he played..
Topped by one of the most soaring, crystal clear trumpeter’s I’ve ever experienced.
And yes….hearing Doc Severinson? Is an experience…
I sat there in my theatre seat, waiting, when the band walked out the crowd went wild. Wilder than I’ve ever heard an audience on a cruise ship for any show ever. And then the sound started.
My dad always told me that playing, that performing, was putting a part of your soul out into the audience, of letting them feel something of you. But this wasn’t just that, that first crystalline note reached into you and took something out of you. I was crying before I even knew I was crying. By the time the show was over (both of them there are two shows every night, and this was one time I went to both), my mascara had run and my hands stung from clapping.
I grew up with the name Doc Severinson, he’s one of the legends my father used to tell me about, one of the names that I’ve known since I was a child. You could have knocked me over with a feather when I heard he was on the ship. He’s nearly 90 years old, but he can still play, and there is nothing, nothing like hearing music like that live.
And the style that band plays, not big band swing, but full on gypsy-style jazz, is intoxicating. Those of you who know me well know my weakness for a well played gypsy-reel, blend that with the most amazing brass playing you’ll ever here, and you have one very very happy girl.
As our CD said this evening after the last show
“all of you, remember this night, because you have really witnessed a legend”
My only wish? I wish my Dad had been sitting next to me….