{"id":4051,"date":"2017-06-15T16:59:52","date_gmt":"2017-06-15T16:59:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/?p=4051"},"modified":"2017-06-15T17:07:08","modified_gmt":"2017-06-15T17:07:08","slug":"seeing-stanley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/?p=4051","title":{"rendered":"Seeing Stanley"},"content":{"rendered":"
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For a split second sometime around 1989 Stanley Clarke made a pop band with Stuart Copeland. It was called Animal Logic. They played the El Mocambo and when I got there it was packed, shoulder to shoulder but by that point I had already experienced being in a band where at show time I had to walk through a sea of people to get to the stage. A sea of people just opens up if you act like you have a job to do so I said excuse me, excuse me, and by the time I got to the front there was enough room to sit down and experience being 10 ft away from one of the ultimate heroes in life.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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What the fuck Stanley? The music was horrible so horrible. I didn\u2019t care about Stuart Copeland, not my guy but Journey To Love, School Days and all the Return To Forever records were high school vitamins. There was a singer who they were backing up and she was not memorable. There was a generic Los Angeles rock guitarist with big hair and fluorescent tape pieces on his guitar as was the style then, yawn.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Halfway through the singer took a break left the stage and the band played one instrumental. THAT\u2019S WHY WE WERE THERE.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Like climbing Mt. Everest watching Stanley Clarke do his thing. The liquidity of his fingers, the fusing of his heart\/brain\/hands with his listening felt like I was petting a lion. At one point the generic guitarist and Stanley started doing a call response thing, a competition of who could play faster. Every zig zag circular or vertical gesture the guitarist did Stanley did back 3 times more complex and only used his pinky very unlike the organic exchange between him and Jeff Beck from Journey To Love.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Then the singer returned and the band commenced to play more of their \u201cpop\u201d record. I couldn’t handle the idea of waiting another 30 minutes to maybe experience one more instrumental and left.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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