North Sea Jazz 2011 – Day 1

A few weeks ago (I seem to be taking a few weeks to blog about things, recently. Sorry for that.) I attended the North Sea Jazz Festival in Rotterdam, Holland. I splurged and purchased a three-day pass for the entire event, which cost me well over €200, but it was worth every penny. Here’s day one of what I saw.

I hopped on a train from Amsterdam Centraal after work on Friday and made it down to Rotterdam and to the Ahoy (an arena and conference center) in time to snag a pretty decent spot for the first act I wanted to see: Paul Simon. I’ve never been a really strong fan of Paul Simon, but over the years I’ve enjoyed his hits and I can appreciate the place he holds in music history. The man is a legend, and an amazing songwriter. My intrest in his music piqued when I fell in love with The Obvious Child, a song which I performed as a member of the ASU Pan Devils Steel Band in college. Simon was the perfect way to kick off the weekend for me. He was just one of many legendary musicians I would get the chance to see perform from just a few feet away.

The entire festival was held in a series of rooms and halls, and simon played in “Nile,” the largest of the rooms. Nile was basically a giant hangar like structure featuring two large stages. One stage would tear down and set up the next act while an artist played on the other stage, so there was hardly any time without music in Nile. Seating lined the sides and far back of the space and in the middle was open standing room. I managed to get there early enough to be fairly close to the stage, maybe 30 people back, and to the right. Watching Paul Simon perform from maybe 20 yards away was amazing, and he played familiar songs: Graceland, 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover, The Boy in the Bubble, etc. But my night would not be complete without hearing The Obvious Child, and sure enough, he played it. It was a great thrill to hear such an amazing song from a living musical legend. And that was the first concert of the entire weekend. Like I said, an amazing way to get started.

As if to perfectly contrast a living legend, I left Nile and headed inside into the arena space to see a relatively new artist: Janelle Monáe. The arena space was smaller than Nile, featuring just one stage and having rings of seating around a main stranding room floor space. I left Paul Simon a bit early to grab a good spot and was maybe 5 people back from the stage and to the left for Janelle Monáe. She did something that very few artists did all weekend: she put on an entire stage show. Most simply came out and played their set, but she insisted on maintaining her stage production. Everything on stage was black and white, including costumes for the backup singers and small 4-person orchestra. A man in a large top hat came on stage to welcome us to the “Emotion Picture,” and soon three cloaked figures were on stage as the musicians began Suite II Overture, the opening track on her album “Archandroid”. The album plays like a concept album, as songs blend from one to the other in a continuous stream of music – and that’s exactly how she performed them.

She went straight through Dance or Die, Faster, Locked Inside and Sir Greendown before mixing things up. Her babyface looks, spiraling beehive hairdo, unique style and energetic performance had the audience grooving, and she took us all along with her as she suddenly swooped into covers. She slyly transitioned into Stevie Wonder’s Cherie Amour and then picked up the pace with The Jackson 5′s I Want You Back before getting her girl power on with No Doubt’s Just a Girl. She made her way back to “Archandroid”, performing Cold War and her hit Tight Rope back to back. At this point I headed out of the arena as she began Come Alive, during which she apparently crowd surfed. Perhaps I missed my chance to grab me some Janelle Monáe. Oh well.

I quickly shuffled over Amazon, a smaller stage with seating in a tent outside between the arena and hangar area. In this case, the fact that I was venturing out to the festival on my own came in handy as I was able to snag a single empty seat in the front row. This was a great stroke of luck because I was now seated front-row and nearly center for an act I was highly anticipating: Robert Randolph and the Family Band. I first discovered Robert Randolph when I saw him perform with Dave Matthews Band at one of their shows in Phoenix some years back. Randolph plays the pedal steel and his group throws down on a mix of funk, soul, blues, gospel and jam music. It’s an absolutely amazing sound, and I highly recommend him if you enjoy those genres.

He played some songs I’m familiar with off his most recent album, “Walk This Road,” including Travelling Shoes, Back to the Wall and Shot of Love. I’m fairly certain he played some covers as well, but they are escaping me at this point. There’s a video from the festival of Robert Randolph’s performance of Voodoo Chile online, as well as this video of the same song shot by a fan in the audience. In that last one you can see me bobbing my head in the front row (I’m directly to the right of the shiny-domed bald guy next to me.) As you can see, eventually people started filtering infront of the first row of seats to dance and jam out. It was a great time.

I stayed until the end of Robert Randolph’s performance, mostly because he was tearing the roof off of the small tent they put him in, but also because I wasn’t terribly invested in the next act I saw: Alain Clark. There was a lull in the overall event schedule, so I decided to see Clark, who is a Dutch pop vocalist. I looked into his music and found a handful of his songs to be pretty catchy, but such is pop music – it’s designed that way. I mentioned to a co-worker that I was going to catch part of his set and she seemed disgusted by the notion, and she was probably justified to feel that way.

Clark may be one of the few artists who I enjoy more on an album that I do live in concert. He seemed to be going page-by-page through the pop concert checklist and repeating it ten-fold. Maybe he was trying to fill time, but every song went on too long with call-and-response chants with the audience, long instrumental breakdowns, clapping and encouraging the audience to sing large chunks of the chorus. It was getting kind of old. I swear, if he pointed that mic toward the audience one more time I was going to strangle him with it. I would have rather he filled that time with covers if he didn’t have enough songs to fill the space (which seems ridiculous since he has two full length albums out). Songs I remember hearing include This Ain’t Gonna Work, Fell in Love and Father & Friend, a sappy duet with his dad, who he brought on stage at the show. Not being very well-versed in Dutch music culture, I assumed that father Clark was a well known singer who’s son had followed in his footsteps. Nope, his claim to fame is being Alain Clark’s dad. And singing a super sappy duet with him. Ultimately, it was okay, but like I said, it felt like he was trying to hard to get the audience involved. We don’t have that kind of energy for every song, especially at a three-day festival.

After that let down, I moved on into the indoor conference hall area to finish out the first day with some real jazz: The Clayton Hamilton Jazz Orchestra. This was an old school classic jazz orchestra, complete with the custom music stands in front the saxophones. This was a more tame performance hall, complete with chairs and a rear grandstand. I, again, managed to nab a seat in the front because I was a single. They played mostly tunes I hadn’t heard before, but most of the older folks in the hall seemed to recognize them.

At one point a popular Dutch jazz singer, Trijntje Oosterhuis, took the stage and blew us away with Night and Day and Oh What a Beautiful Morning from “Oklahoma!” Later, guitarist and vocalist John Pizzarelli came out to do some Sinatra tunes, including Nice ‘N’ Easy and How About You. To wrap the whole thing up, Oosterhuis and Pizzarelli performed a rousing closing tune: Jimmy Buffet’s Another Saturday Night, which you can hear on Oosterhuis’ album that she recorded with the Clayton Hamilton Jazz Orchestra. Or just listen right here on YouTube.

This all ended around 1:30 am, at which point I hopped back on a train thar arrived back in Amsterdam around 3am. I grabbed my bike and pedaled home to finally get some sleep around 4am (right around when the sun starts coming up at this longitude).

And that, folks, was day one.