Radio Bean Birthday Party Part 2 With Linda Bassick, The Cleary Family, Static Blooming Circut, Erich Pachner’s Romance, Malcolm Sanders And Irish Sessions, Gua Gua, And The High Breaks November 7, 2015

Words by Tim Lewis.

I just got back from my second run at the Radio Bean birthday party. I arrived just before 11am and Linda Bassick was on stage singing a song about Fishermen. The kids in the audience enjoyed it, as did we adults. She followed with How Sweet It Is To Be Loved By You and wrapped her fun set with The Lion Sleeps Tonight. She was as delightful as always.

Next up was The Cleary Family who turned out to be Joe Cleary and his two very young daughters. He and one daughter played violin while the other played a hand drum. They opened with Amazing Grace then played something I did not know. Did they say it was a Gua Gua song? For the last song, the violin played moved to acoustic guitar, the drummer moved to the keyboards and Joe moved to the hand drum. The instrumental they played was kind of simple but each of the girls threw in some musical sparks and it was quite enjoyable. Watch out world, those kids have a ton of potential.

Static Blooming Circut followed and the first song was just Kevin Bloom using an electric guitar, and a radio, and his voice, to create some super-cool sonic effects. His soundscaping drifted along nicely and was rather enjoyable. For the second song he was joined by Max Freeberg on drums and Joe Adler on a shiny silver bass. Joe and Max laid down a funky groove, that shifted around a little here and there, and Kevin soundscaped with guitar and voice over it. Mixed over the top was a Lou Reed sounding rap and the whole effect was just great. The songs were pretty long so they only got to play the two of them.

Up next was Erich Pachner’s Romance, which was just Eric on acoustic guitar and harmonica. He played a trio of country blues songs with subversive lyrics.

Malcolm Sanders was on next and he was joined on violin by Joe Cleary and they played some Irish songs. The harmony violins on the first song were very sweet. They tossed in an Irish polka for the second song and wrapped their set with some reels. It was pretty cool.

Gua Gua followed and filled the stage with percussion players. They had one guitar player, a keyboard player, a bass player, a drummer with two snares and a cowbell, a bongo player and a maraca player. Their first song was a mellow happy jazzy groove lead alternatively by sweet guitar licks and keyboard licks. It created a lovely space. The second song was a bit more upbeat and may be called Voodoo #3. It had a bit of a mellow Santana groove and was quite nice too. Since both songs were quite long, they only got the two.

Things started rocking after a lighting quick band change and The High Breaks kicked off with a cool surf rock song that I did not know, but totally loved. They followed with Salty Shore, then rocked the room with Banana Seat. They closed their set with The Big One. I really loved every note of the set and am sure they got to play 4 because they were so quick to set up and their songs are not very long.

It was a bit warm in the room so I headed home to drop my coat and write a little. I will head back soon.

This post was originally published by Tim Lewis at his personal blog, https://timstriangletribune.wordpress.com.