The Robert Glasper Experiment & Bilal @ Chicago’s Double Door – March 10, 2012

Last weekend I had the pleasure of finally witnessing The Robert Glasper Experiment do their thing. Although drummer Chris “Daddy” Dave wasn’t on this tour, replacement Mark Colenburg more than held his own. (As I knew he would after I saw him play with The Robert Glasper Trio last month in St. Louis. Don’t miss my audio recording of that here.)

On this chilly Chicago night, special guest Bilal joined the Experiment for 3 tunes: the David Bowie cover, Letter To Hermione, the J Dilla produced Reminisce, and his seminal piece, All Matter. On top of that, the Experiment played for well over 2 hours without a break. One of the highlights for me was Glasper repeatedly teasing Radiohead‘s Everything In Its Right Place during this 6 minute piano solo, which led into All Matter. I ended up shooting 48 minutes of footage using my video camera, external microphone and monopod. Check it out below:

The Robert Glasper Experiment
March 10, 2012 – Chicago, IL @ Double Door
Butterfly (Herbie Hancock & The Headhunters cover):

The Robert Glasper Experiment
March 10, 2012 – Chicago, IL @ Double Door
Lift Off (inc. drum solos):

The Robert Glasper Experiment & Bilal
March 10, 2012 – Chicago, IL @ Double Door
Reminisce:

The Robert Glasper Experiment & Bilal
March 10, 2012 – Chicago, IL @ Double Door
Piano solo (inc. Everything In Its Right Place teases) > All Matter:

The Robert Glasper Experiment & Bilal
March 10, 2012 – Chicago, IL @ Double Door
All Matter (continued):

The Robert Glasper Experiment:
Robert Glasper: keys
Casey Benjamin: saxophones, keytar, vocoder, keys
Derrick Hodge: bass
Mark Colenburg: drums
+ special guest Bilal: vocals

Full setlist: A Love Supreme (John Coltrane cover), A Tear To A Smile (Roy Ayers cover), Butterfly (Herbie Hancock & The Headhunters cover), Letter To Hermione (David Bowie cover) (with Bilal), Lift Off (inc. drum solos), Bass solo > Say Yes (Floetry cover), Cherish The Day (Sade cover), Reminisce (with Bilal), Piano solo (w/ Everything In It’s Right Place teases) > All Matter (with Bilal), Ah Yeah > Drum solo > Smells Like Teen Spirit

If you made it this far, then you’re probably interested in the other Robert Glasper recordings I’ve been posting lately:
(1) these 3/20/12 Experiment Chicago videos
(2) 2/27/12 Experiment WNYC radio session audio here
(3) Experiment with Roy Ayers & Pete Rock @ North Sea Jazz Fest last year here
and
(4) there are 2 other goodies, but you’ll have to search my facebook page for it (hint: March 3rd).

The Roots at Lowlands Festival 2011: Pro-Shot VIDEOS

Now that The Roots are on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon they can’t log 100+ days a year on the road like they used to. However, they apparently still manage to sneak in weekend trips to Europe for festival gigs like this.

Here, I bring you a full ~60 minute pro-shot tv broadcast video of The Roots at the Lowlands Festival in Biddinghuizen, Netherlands on August 21, 2011. At this point in time, The Roots were bass-less. Owen Biddle, their bass player since early 2008, had just left the band and they hadn’t yet picked up new bass player, Mark Kelley. Not to worry, Damon Bryson, aka Tuba Gooding Jr., holds the low end down on sousaphone.

This video initially appeared as a DVD download over at dimeadozen.org. I took the liberty of splitting it and posting to youtube so a wider audience can enjoy it. So enjoy…

Also, pay special attention to video 5 of 5, where Black Thought blacks the f— out spitting Kool G Rap’s “Men @ Work” verses. Absolutely ridiculous.

The Roots (1 of 5) August 21, 2011
Biddinghuizen, The Netherlands @ Lowlands Festival
Intro > How I Got Over > Here I Come > Mellow My Man:

The Roots (2 of 5) August 21, 2011
Biddinghuizen, The Netherlands @ Lowlands Festival
Mellow My Man (continued) > Drums > Mellow My Man > Jusufckwithis > Fantastic > You Got Me Intro:

The Roots (3 of 5) August 21, 2011
Biddinghuizen, The Netherlands @ Lowlands Festival
You Got Me > Sweet Child O’ Mine > Bad To The Bone > You Got Me > Immigrant Song / Monster:

The Roots (4 of 5) August 21, 2011
Biddinghuizen, The Netherlands @ Lowlands Festival
Immigrant Song / Monster (continued) > Get Busy > Jungle Boogie > The Next Movement > The Seed:

The Roots (5 of 5) August 21, 2011
Biddinghuizen, The Netherlands @ Lowlands Festival
The Bottle (Gil-Scott Heron cover) > Move On Up (Curtis Mayfield cover) > Men @ Work (Kool G Rap & DJ Polo cover):

D’Angelo & The Soultronics – July 16, 2000 North Sea Jazz Festival – The Voodoo Tour

So, we’ve been waiting exactly 11 years for D’Angelo to make his comeback. Some of us kept the faith, while others lost it at various points over the past decade. For me, it was merely a matter of patience. I knew he’d be back eventually. And if I ever needed a reminder i’d just pull out a live recording of his Voodoo Tour with The Soultronics to dismiss any of my doubts.

Lately, we’ve begun to hear rumblings of a come back, with live dates booked and selling out in Europe for late January and early February 2012. Then Questlove informed us that the tour is real, that Pino Palladino and Chris Dave just committed, and that D’s new album is 97% done and has to be turned in to the record label 3 days before Christmas.

So I dug deep in my archives, and I’m bringing you the FM radio audio of the July 16, 2000 North Sea Jazz Festival performance.
DOWNLOAD LINKS: MP3 (upgraded with missing first 5 minutes!) / FLAC.

I also took the audience shot video and synced it up the FM audio. The full video can be downloaded in DVD format here or you can view it on youtube in 4 parts below. Now we just cross our fingers that the tour goes off without a hitch and that some new live recordings show up. Oh, and fingers crossed that the tour continues in the U.S. and that the album actually gets released, finally!

Before you watch this first video, read this except from D’Angelo’s recent interview for GQ Magazine: He was beginning to sense a darkness beckoning. He recalls a particular moment onstage at the North Sea Jazz festival in 2000. The band was in the middle of “Devil’s Pie,” his song about the spell fame casts upon the weak—Who am I to justify / All the evil in our eye / When I myself feel the high / From all that I despise—when he felt an ominous presence in the crowd. “That night I felt something that was like, whoa,” he tells me. E-vil.

(1 of 4) Devil’s Pie > Funk Jam > Send It On:

(2 of 4) Feel Like Makin Love > Chicken Grease:

(3 of 4) Shit Damn Motherfucker,
Brown Sugar Interlude > Untitled (How Does It Feel?):

(4 of 4) Lady > Funk Jam > Jonz In My Bonz > Funk Jam:

D’Angelo: vocals, keyboards
The Soultronics:
Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson: drums
Frankie “Knuckles” Walker: percussion
Pino Palladino: bass
June Bervine (or sometimes James Poyser): keyboards
C. Edward “Spanky” Alford & Samuel “Norris” Jones: guitars
Anthony Hamilton, Shelby Johnson & Jack King: background vocals
Jacques “Brother Jacques” Schwarz-Bart: tenor saxophone
Russell Gunn (or sometimes Roy Hargrove): trumpet
Frank “Root” Lacy: trombone & trumpet

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The Robert Glasper Experiment & Bilal @ Chicago’s Double Door – March 10, 2012

The Roots at Lowlands Festival 2011: Pro-Shot VIDEOS

D’Angelo & The Soultronics – July 16, 2000 North Sea Jazz Festival – The Voodoo Tour