Frothing at the mouth.

I returned from the Montreal International Jazz Festival at about 1:45 this morning tired, but totally inspired. We went to see Béla Fleck and the Fleckt0nes at Place des Arts. They were incredible. I am going to spout superlatives for the next few minutes, so bear with me. The bassist, Victor W00ten, played the most amazing electric bass solo I have ever heard, and that’s saying something, considering up ’til last night I thought Alain Caron was the best bassist I had ever heard. The tenor/alto/soprano sax/flute player Jeff C0ffin (unfortunate last name, that) was stellar on all those instruments. The percussionist (I can’t just call him a drummer) Futureman (Roy W00ten, the brother of the bassist) was fantastic, playing an electronic guitar-shaped drum pad as well as a conventional drum kit (he also wore a funny tricorne hat with a white feather, very entertaining), and of course the front man, Béla Fleck playing various banjos, was a consummate artist. He played a five-string banjo solo that incuded a transcribed Bach cello suite and the theme from The Beverly Hillbillies.

But the adjective “awesome” I reserve for H0ward Levy, who at one time played in the band and joined them again for last night’s show. He delivered the best darn harmonica solo I have ever heard anywhere, anytime, a five-minute rendition of Amazing Grace harmonized and with counterpoint, with him singing a drone so it sounded like bagpipes, so perfect that I was on the edge of my seat through most of it and the audience leapt to its feet afterwards in a spontaneous standing ovation. He was awesome.

Sitting exactly two rows directly in front of us was a friend of mine who just graduated from Bushop’s, taking his mom out for her birthday. He sported at one time a beautiful mane of curly blonde locks which he wore in a pony tail, arguably one of his best features. I knew that he’d cut it recently, but apart from a bad photo on Faceb00k I had no idea how it looked. We recognized his T-shirt (it had B.U. Singers emblazoned across the back) before we figured out it was him, at which point Kevin O reached across the intervening row with his cane and tickled his left ear. Who says half-centenarians can’t still be bastards? The guy looks years younger with short hair. He admitted he was carded at the SAQ, something that hasn’t happened since he was 15.

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