New Ghost - Live Upstairs at Nicks, January 23, 1998
SKU
05-ESP4030
Improvising group featuring Elliot Levin (vocals, saxes, flute) & Rick Iannacone (vocals, guitar), both of whom have played with Keith Macksoud (Present) and Paul Sears (Muffins) in Thee Maximalists along with Steve Testa (bass) and John Testa (drums) with guests, including Jim Menesis on percussion. "If one was to believe descriptive snippets, the thing to do when Elliot Levin approaches is find a place to hide. In a worse case scenario, try to climb a tree--at least, that is the advice hikers would receive about the oncoming approach of something "ferocious...frenzied...bearlike." However, the comparison with bears is based on the size and appearance of the Philadelphia performer, while the other adjectives are filling one of their more esoteric purposes in the English language, attempting to describe just what it is free jazz performers do when they blow into their horns. Whatever it is, Levin does a lot of it, on tenor saxophone and flute. He also has a quite active career as a published poet and likes to combine the two aesthetics in his performances, much to the delight of the growing live poetry audience and to the chagrin of hipsters who insist jazz poetry is a form of torture, worse than cold showers."