In the last ten years I’ve either played at or attended thousands of shows. I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy about a performance in which I didn’t actually perform. In that same decade I’ve been shopping at Fingerprints in Long Beach: I bought my first Squarepusher and Steve Reich records there and with the Anthony Shadduck Quartet show last night, I set up their first free jazz in-store.
The free performance brought out almost 70 people and they were witness to some vintage explorations. Old friends Nels Cline and Lynn Johnston were in fine form and the rhythm section of Bert Karl and the aforementioned Anthony Shadduck kept the churn.
The quartet was in consistent peril and the tension was palpable. I was smiling and on the balls of my feet for the entire fifty-minute, three movement improvisation. From clicking be-bop shuffle to stately melodic overtures to upright bass/electric guitar triplet pantomimes, Messrs. Shadduck and Co. rarely rested. The audience, no doubt there to see first hand the mythic fingers of Nels Cline, were witness to that rarest of assemblies: one soaked in honesty. Although the stray cliché slipped into the proceedings the bulk of the performance was a white-knuckle affair.
Lynn Johnston, performing on alto, bass and standard clarinet, bellowed, swooped and curled his notes around the strings of Shadduck’s bass. Cline wrung metallic swirls of sound out of his guitar. He alternated between clusters of notes and thin ribbons of sound looped, reversed and de-tuned. Drummer Karl conjured hi-hat ticks and tom-taps with an economy of movement. He played at times against and along the current of the evening, occasionally providing a flurry of rhythm followed by spare bass drum kicks. The ensemble’s organizing namesake, Anthony Shadduck however, rose to occasion and pulled together all disparate elements creating a conversation that no doubt would be better understood upon repeated listens. His bass lines crackled and crept: from breakneck to Brokeback.
After two extended improvisations Bert Karl tore sharply into a drum solo. Cline, Shadduck and Johnston quickly followed suit and were in and out with vague unison lines rescued from the dust by muscle memory. Restless, the group exchanged ideas and quickly organized itself. Cline scraped. Shadduck stabbed. As the mangled end came near a collective exhale and applause refused to let night fall into silence.
Originally published in L.A. Record
