At the Garage in Greenwhich Village, NYC: French Cookin' Blues Band

While my personal preference when it comes to jazz is a mixture of jazz and rock-and-roll, I found the style in which French Cookin' Blues Band played at the Garage refreshing and light. Firstly, there was considerably less heavy drumbeat in the band's performance than I am used to. Instead, the band relied heavily on its guitarists to carry the beat, which they did admirably, intermingling two acoustic guitars and one bass guitar. Similar to many other jazz bands, the improvisations were almost all solo numbers, but there were three or four absolutely exquisite improvisational duets, accompanied by very light drums keeping rhythm in a few places.

One unusual instrument that was present in the band and contributed many improvisations was the harmonica. This was the first time I have heard a harmonica on stage outside the Blue Grass country bands. A harmonica player, Josh Goldberg, manipulated at least two-dozen of various harmonicas throughout the performance, and it actually sounded like he used a different one for every song.

Despite his discreet participation in band numbers, the drummer, Glenn Allen, completely stole the show with his improvisations. I am used to drum solos, which are quite frequent in rock-and-roll, so I was not surprised at the audience's enthusiastic reaction to Allen's solo numbers. Unlike rock improvisations, however, Allen's numbers were much lighter, perhaps because he used smaller drums and relied more heavily on cymbals. The drums-bass guitar improvisation was also quite good and underscored the band's blues roots.

Despite the quick rhythm changes overlapping with the steady drum and bass guitar beats, the band played with commendable cohesion. Among the more impressive feats they performed was the quick and seamless transitions from solo numbers to band play and vice versa. On many occasions, the musicians did not even give the crowd a chance to acknowledge solo performances, going into an energetic beat to cover the applause. Also, on a couple of occasions, the band swung from one song to another with only a short pause, which contributed to the appearance of seamlessness.

The trend of uniformity was reinforced by the fact that every member of the band contributed to singing the lyrics. In practically every song, leads changed not only after every stanza, but sometimes in the middle of it as well. It also was not unusual for many songs to be performed by two or more singers almost from the beginning to the end.

While I generally enjoyed the performance, I was not overwhelmed by it. In my opinion, the absence of one strong lead singer in the band takes something away from its appeal. This is also the reason I think the band will not achieve any exalted status in the world of jazz and will remain strictly a lounge band.