Customer Reviews

Live in Time & Space

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is GREAT. HA! A DJ friend recomended this a week ago, and I have yet to take it out of the stereo.

If you have ever had the priviledge of playing a brass, wood wind or percussion instrument in a band, GET THIS CD.

If you have ever jammed with a group of musicians and felt that magic feeling when everything just seemed to work, GET THIS CD.

If you have ever gone to a High School football game, and got that spiritual, uplifting feelin when the band played CHARGE, GET this CD.
You wont be sorry... Gaurenteed.

This is an American (San Francisco Bay Area) brass band, no relation to the better-known British folk group of the same name. On this recording, the band is a nine-person ensemble of trumpets, trombones, saxes, sousaphone and a whole lot of drums and percussion. Their sound is a fairly unique mix of jazz and marching band, heavy on drums, with a touch of marimba. The pieces are mostly instrumentals, though one has some narration, another track has some chanted lines I couldn't really understand, and there are periodic announcements that various band members, or the audience as a whole, are "under arrest". It's a spirited performance, and it sounds like it would be a kick to see these guys live with a beer in your hand. On this recording, though -- all the pieces are long (four of the seven tracks are longer than 8 or 9 minutes) and have considerable internal variation, with the effect that to my ears, at least, the tracks are not very distinctly different from one another. Perhaps the quality of the live recording, or the acoustics of the place they were playing in, have something to do with it, too; far and away the best cut on the disc is the hidden-track studio recording at the end. For my money, on this disc the band is good but not great -- and perhaps they should have considered other band names than one that puts them in direct comparison with greats.

this music is truely unique, uplifting,toe tapping, and just plain fun!try listening to samples. you'll be hooked!

Haven't heard this CD, but judging from their live performances at the Monterey Jazz Festival in California, 2003, they are a spectacularly different group full of joy and if the CD is anything like their live gig, buy the CD!

Both live and recorded, these guys simply bring fun and joy to your ears. Not only are they great all around musicians, accomplished in Jazz, Classical and Rock as well, not only are they of the new generation of young american talent who have supplemented their having done their time in the basement boot camps and endless fifty-dollar-a-night gigs with a foundation of years of serious scholastic study and degrees, but they are themselves having so much fun playing this stuff, and that is the contagious factor that comes across as you listen. Just grab this CD, have fun, and catch them at one of their many San Francisco/Bay Area live performances and just try to stand still. Last Mardi Gras opening for Zigaboo Modeliste was outstanding.