Tony Levin's band

[tombo74]

Last sunday I saw Tony Levin's Band at the Quebec summer Festival.
Quite a show!!! Powerful and tasteful prog rock.
The band:
Tony Levin on all kinds of basses: stick, electric upright, fingersticks on 5-strings...
Jesse Gress on guitar
Larry Fast on keys
and Jerry Marotta on drums, percussion, lead vocals and guitar with fingersticks (like Levin)

Marotta is still in great shape, he hits and grooves hard. Mostly with toms/snare grooves in quite the style he played with Peter Gabriel.
They played some of Levin's tunes, a King Crimson cover (Sleepless) and Back in NYC of Genesis with Jerry Marotta on lead vocals (probably not easy to sing lead while playing in 7).

They were supporting their latest live CD "Double Espresso" which should be good.

Levin is a "musicaholic", after his show, he played with a local pop singer: Kevin Parent (Tony will do his next tour) and after that ran to another stage to join the California Guitar Trio (Marotta was there to).Tony played non-stop for 4 hours with 3 different bands!!!

Here are some links:

http://www.tonylevin.com/index.shtml
http://www.tonylevin.com/quebec03.htm
http://www.tonylevin.com/quebec03-2.htm

Thought I'd share.
Tombo

PS: Does Jerry Marotta and his brother Rick still busy? We don't hear much from them nowadays.

[Randy walker]

Jerry produces allot of people, Larry Gowan for one, also works with the Indigo Girls and Joan Osborne I believe. Rick scores music for TV in LA, mostly Everyone loves Raymond and every now and then gets an on camera cameo.

[sidereal]

Is it considered a cover if you co-wrote the song? [img]wink.gif[/img] (sleepless)

Man, I would have loved to see that outfit do Back In New York City by Genesis. "Wires" Fast must have been going nuts on that song.

Thanks for the post on that.

[Nikk]

I was drunk at a friend's house a year ago or so during the summer and swore I saw Rick Marotta on an episode of "Son of the Beach." I guess it really was him after all. I think he played a villain...

[Dazzler]

There was an hour long documentry here in the UK about the making of Aja. It was wicked and had Fagen and Becker in the studio with the original master tapes listening and comentating on the music. Great stuff! Anyway, they got in Rick Marotta to show his groove for Peg. It was the most laziest, grooviest thing ever! SO laid back it was untrue. [img]cool.gif[/img]
On another note, they also had Bernard Purdie playing some of his grooves. The guy is hilarious and has no shame! He will happily tell you that you are to be congratulated on having hired the best drummer!! His playing was needless to say funky as f*ck! [img]eek.gif[/img] [img]wink.gif[/img]

[tombo74]

Thanks for the info Randy (you the drum bible),
I guess it's important to be able to do other things than playing when you want a longlasting career in music.
You can't be the first call studio/tour guy forever. Touring might also be less appealing when you get older.
The Marottas obviously managed to stay in demand in the music industry by developing other musical skills.

And sidereal,
Yes Larry Fast is good. I did'nt know much of him besides his collaboration with Nektar (good prog band of the 70's).
His patches sound big and rich (unlike others we know [img]wink.gif[/img] ).
In fact the chords that Levin's band produced (guitar+keys+ fuzzy electric contrabass played with bow) are the most powerful I've ever heard.
I was there with my kids and they experienced for the first time what it is to feel the sound in your chest and stomach!!