Tuesday 24 August 2010

Living Colour Not From This World



Seeing Living Colour perform is always a real treat. It's just great watching four very skilled and creative musicians playing incredible funky rock songs on stage. I liked their performance a while ago a lot and so I knew what to expect. Boy was I wrong.

Living Colour at Paradiso Amsterdam, August 14 2010 (Ronald Says 9 out of 10)
We arrived just too late for the support act Seeka that played quite a solid set so we were told. After half an hour one by one the members of Living Colour walked on stage. Singer Glover was wearing an interesting outfit with retro glasses, retro hat and something that looked like a blacksmith apron. They kicked it off right away with a rock solid groove.

What followed was kind of hard to describe. Instead of playing a greatest hits set they started playing their best grooving songs. And these amazing musicians are just incredible at that. Vernon Reid's mouth watering guitar riffs and solos, Doug Wimbish's insane bass lines and sounds and Will Calhoun's solid drum play blew me away like a groove train running me over. I could only watch in awe while these guys were killing it. Of course they played a couple of their great hit songs but mostly it was if they were just jamming and taking their music to incredible heights.



Wimbish played a beautiful bass solo packed with creativity partly joining the crowd off the stage. And of course Calhoun played one of his incredible solos with the spacy light sticks and some funky neon electronic cymbal pads. Reid had a baseball cap slightly turned on his head looking like a naughty school boy as he was squeezing his screaming riffs out of his guitar. And Glover's voice still is great and powerful after all this years, hitting every high note just right. He was looking around the room with a big smile as if he was thinking "we're just blowing you guys away".

If you have no clue what a strong groove is then just watch these guys simply being perfect at it. After one and a half hour I simply had no clue what just happened. The crowd kept asking for more but the band didn't come back for an encore. The groove train doesn't stop but it just keeps on going. Onto the next venue to run everyone over.

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