music friday: george shearing, rockpile, pink

George Shearing, Concord, 70s. I guess I revisit this one every once in a while. I think this is the third time I've written about, mostly just cut-and-pasting what I wrote before. The two most important items: I shook his hand, and he was featured in a scene from On the Road:

And Shearing began to rock; a smile broke over his ecstatic face; he began to rock in the piano seat, back and forth, slowly at first, then the beat went up, and he began rocking fast, his left foot jumped with every beat, his neck began to rock crookedly, he brought his face down to the keys, he pushed his hair back, his combed hair dissolved, he began to sweat. The music picked up. The bass-player hunched over and socked it in, faster and faster, it seemed faster and faster, that’s all. Shearing began to play his chords; they rolled out of his piano in great rich showers; you’d think the man wouldn’t have time to line them up. They rolled and rolled like the sea. Folks yelled for him to “Go”. Dean was sweating, the sweat poured down his collar. “There he is! That’s him! Old God! Old God Shearing! Yes! Yes! Yes!” And Shearing was conscious of the madman behind him, he could hear every one of Dean’s gasps and imprecations, he could sense it though he couldn’t see. “That’s right!” Dean said. “Yes!” Shearing smiled; he rocked. Shearing rose from the piano, dripping with sweat; these were his great 1949 days before he became cool and commercial. When he was gone Dean pointed to the empty piano seat. ‘God's empty chair,’ he said.”

Rockpile, Oakland?, 8-12-79. They opened for Blondie, and due respect to the headliners, but Rockpile blew them off the stage. They only recorded one album as Rockpile ... a live album from the same period was released a few decades later ... but in effect, they had several albums released as solo discs, as Dave Edmunds and Nick Lowe. To the point, Edmunds once released "Heart of the City", a Nick Lowe track, simply overdubbing his own vocal atop Lowe's version (which Edmunds had played on). They were a fine band. Other members were Billy Bremmer on guitar and Terry Williams on drums.

Pink, Warfield, Fillmore, San Jose, Oakland, 2002, 2006, 2009, 2013, 2018, 2019. Not much to add about Pink ... seen her six times, all since this blog began so I've written about her for almost 20 years. She's one of the few music artists to get her own category on the blog, so if you want to take a trip down memory lane, go here.