Nomo, or Boston and Back
One of my discoveries on emusic since joining last November is Ann Arbor-based "post-Afro-beat" band Nomo. Their latest offering is the Better Than That EP on Dutch label Kindred Spirits; when it showed up on emusic I downloaded it immediately. Then I checked their website, and lo and behold, they're touring! Unfortunately the closest they were coming to Ithaca was Toronto, Boston, NYC, or Pittsburgh. So I decided to drive to Boston, visit my brother and his family, and go to the show with my brother, something we haven't done together since seeing Bootsy and the P-Funk All-Stars at Kilimanjaro in Washington about...16 years ago?! Was it worth a six-hour drive? (And another one back to Ithaca?*) You bet! It was as if all my favorite elements of all musical genres were all rolled up into a single band. Leader Elliot Bergman plays saxophone, synths (one set to electric piano and the other to what I'll call "Funky Worm Moog"), and kalimba (which I haven't seen anyone play since seeing Steve Tibbetts and Marc Anderson at the old Birchmere in 1991), there's a drummer and a percussionist, a bassist, a guitarist/percussionist, and a four-piece horn section with two trumpets, an alto sax, and a whomping baritone sax. Elliot even had his younger sister along to play some kind of cymbal-stick. The concert was a rollicking good time with plenty of funky beats, fat horn jams, tribal chants, and wild soloing from all the band members. The baritone sax was especially impressive, with lightning-fast runs in the upper register punctuated with huge bass blasts. And the horn players all played conch shells in one song! Wow! I'm going to have to see them on every tour. They played a cover of Sun Ra's "Rocket #9;" as they are not averse to covers, I would love to hear them take on Edgar Winter's "Frankenstein." Here's "Better Than That:"
The opening act, local eleven-piece Afrobeat band The Superpowers, were no slouches, delivering a tight and energetic set which would have been worth the ten-dollar cover charge by itself. And they had something Nomo didn't: two trombonists, who traded licks in a fantastic double solo in one of the songs.
* I didn't actually do all the driving; many thanks to my lovely wife Eva for making the whole thing possible by coming along and helping out with the driving, and to Basil (age 3) for being such a good boy on our trip!
