[Harp-L] John Popper Project San Fran

["Bill Hines" <billhines4@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Went to see john popper last night in San Francisco. The club was called
The Independent, a new place in san fran, very much like the theater of
the living arts in philly on south street - you walk in and it's like a
gutted theater with no seats, big empty room with a full bar in the back
and there were bench-type seats around the perimeter, slightly raised. I
love that kind of stuff, you can mingle freely and not forced to sit in
some seat the whole time. People were up and boogying. The warm-up was
some white reggae dude named trevor hall or something, just him with an
acoustic (amplified) and a percussion dude. He was pretty good, I guess
he's a big deal to the younger set, he had quite a few followers there.

So popper's band comes out (John Popper Project) and does a few tunes.
I'm looking for him and thinking "WTF popper, this is some dump in SF
with a a hundred or so people here, no need for this crap, come out with
your band". But I guess he's the star. His band also had DJ Logic
spinning turntables which I was never a big fan of turntables in music
but have to say it did sound pretty cool with their vibe. The band were
all great musicians. 

So popper comes out and I'm not expecting much because I respect the guy
for what he's accomplished but his stuff never really "got me", I'm too
much of a blues guy I guess. He's thinner now due to the stomach
surgery. He was mostly singing and then riffing on the harp some. He had
the big thick black umbilical cord thing going on as far as the rig he
usually plays through with blues traveler, lots of pedals and gizmos and
some of his effects sounded pretty cool. I was enjoying it for a while,
sort of a world music thing. 

But then he started spending most of his time up on the high end and
that always kind of grates on me for some reason, probably some medical
defect of my own or something caused by all the head injuries from
hockey and motorcycle accidents. I want to be careful to not slam his
playing, he was obviously good, this was just my take on it based on
what I liked. When he was on the low end it was excellent. But I
remember thinking the same thing listening to John Hammond at the Pocono
blues fest this past summer, it was just too much screechy high-end
stuff and I bolted to check out something else. I'm sure there are lots
of people who dig it though.

So anyway, this was a good value for $17. I didn't get to hang around
for more than about an hour because the person I was with had had enough
(booze as well as the music, haha) so we had to bolt. This is worth
checking out if they hit your town, hell it was only $17 to get in.

Bill Hines
Hershey, PA