| Author | Message | ||
| ttwatts
Junior Username: ttwatts Post Number: 20 Registered: 9-2004 |
Dear friends, As a broadcaster who covered, and a fan who followed, the Return To Forever Returns 2008 World Tour, I have to remark at this point that it seemed to fulfill, if not surpass, my expectations and in so many ways I hated to see it end. I will take so many memories of my experiences for ward and I believe I speak for many other RTF fans who continue to dream of more to come. As Lenny White told me when I first spoke to the guys in the autumn of 2007 during the point of the initial announcement of the tour, there is a need for high-level music to feed those music lovers who are hungry for art like this and wow, did the guys deliver, or what!? This reunion and tour had such a strong spirit about it even before it became a reality…with Chick and Al getting back together in 2006 to record on Al’s solo project “Consequence Of Chaos,” to Stanley and Lenny touring together in 2007 with Patrice Rushen on piano playing “No Mystery” and tantalizing me with thoughts of having Chick on keys playing with them again. The guys were obviously talking and there seemed to be a feeling of unfinished business in the air. Chick told me how the 1983 reunion tour, which featured mostly new material, hadn’t quite pleased the audience enough, and that was the most important thing to the band. They felt the relationship with the fans so deeply and didn’t want to disappoint us. With that underlying concern and the desire to play again with old friends the stage was set for the marvelous event that followed. When the band began rehearsals in Los Angeles in the winter of 2008 I was invited t o conduct an interview for the RTF website, as well as my modern jazz channel Beyond Jazz on XM Satellite Radio and my program Jazz America heard worldwide by the 94 million listeners on the U. S. Government service Voice of America. I could see the gleam in the eyes of each one of the guys. They were already having a blast just being with one another again and they went to work in earnest. The anticipation began to build all over the world as fans chimed in online with songs they wanted to hear the guys play and clamoring for the band to come to their town! I remember fielding messages from my VOA email account from Ghana and Thailand asking if they’d be coming their way! (Maybe next time?) I found myself green with envy when the first shows were announced and I saw that the great American music center that is Austin, Texas was picked as the first city to see RTF! Why not MY town?! I was patient though, and when I attended the Montreal Jazz Festival in July at the mid-tour point I was psyched and ready to roll…and so was the band! I’d been receiving email and even MP3 reviews of shows as the tour rolled along and almost every single message was raving about the performances, the spirit in the hall, the incredible musicianship, and the euphoric joy that every person in each concert experienced. And no one seemed=2 0to be enjoying it more than Chick, Stanley, Lenny & Al! My 16 year-old daughter Blair attended the show in Montreal with me and when the band took the stage at the Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier and the crowd erupted with a sustained, roaring standing ovation she turned to me and said, “This is kinda like Led Zeppelin isn’t it Dad?” “Yes,” I said “it is kinda like Led Zeppelin.” Funny, she didn’t know that Lenny White counts Led Zep drummer, the late John Bonham, among his favorites, but she did know what it was like to see a super-group take the stage! And did they ever play like a super-group! Not long after the Montreal show the guys were off to slay Europe for a month then returned for the last leg of the tour in the part of the U.S.A. where the band was born, the East. They made their way through Florida, Georgia and Maryland before hitting their hometowns to close it out. Stanley returned triumphantly to the streets of Philadelphia, Chick got to play Boston (no word on whether he got to drive down the street in Chelsea that is now named for him), and the tour ended on an incredible peak as hometown heroes Lenny and Al got to play for an army of fans, friends and family in New York City. I was there for the next to the last show, as the only guy who can dwarf the giant Stanley Clarke, Kareem Adbul Jabbar, introduced the=2 0second set in the beautiful United Palace, just a few blocks from where he personally grew up. The band had come home, literally, but figuratively too…to the hearts of their fans, who never lost hope of seeing those guys on stage and hearing those songs again. The people I’ve heard from say the same thing, it was a bit of nostalgia, but it was a 21st century moment too. The songs they knew before were transformed by the band into new pieces of art. The feelings the fans had originally had when they first heard the music were quickly replaced with new sensations and realizations…that what was then is also now. That the band had returned and that the art they created then and now is forever, timeless and a part of all of us for all time. When Chick left the stage that night in New York he got the last word on the microphone and said something like “we’ll see you next time.” Hey…Chick…maybe that was a flippant statement my friend…but I’m inclined to hold you to that one…and so are a legion of fans! Thanks guys…we loved it! Russ Davis Jazz America Voice of America jazz-america@voa.gov Program Director Beyond Jazz (((XM))) SATELLiTE RADiO | ||
| davehouck
Moderator Username: davehouck Post Number: 6889 Registered: 5-2002 |
Ken; nice review, I enjoyed reading it. I do have one problem with it though. Please send me an email. Thanks. |
