Gig Review - Marc Ribot and Ceramic Dog

One Sunday afternoon, long ago...

Your correspondent had the privilege to share an intense hour and a bit with Ceramic Dog, Marc Ribot's new three-part invention, recently on tour through here and the continent. After house reds and a bowl of wedges with J-Sax, my usual concert-going partner-in-crime, we ascended the steps at the Royal Festival Hall to the Purcell Room, one of the best settings for small ensemble music I've seen in this city to date.
Surrounded by a to-be-expected black-shirt die-hard weirdo audience, Senor Ribot and co slinked their way through the one door at the back centre of the stage. A welcome unexpected beginning to the gig was going from customary fiddling and tuning straight into the first free improv. We had the name to the left on guitar with various electronics before him, then centre stage was Chad Smith, this big surfer looking guy who accompanied any athletics on the kit with an unusual slack-jawed sway. Then to the left, by far the most interesting looking player in the room, was (forgotten his name)....this guy somehow missed out on the Weet-Bix at the childhood breakfast table....tiny head, wearing a giant shoulder-padded jacket from which emerged long spindly unnatural looking arms, also fortified with various electronics and an empty water-cooler bottle.
Free improv melted into tune melted into wacky bleep-infested groove and so on....first highlight was 'Todo El Mundo Es Kitch', which I suppose was Ribot's sung/spoken version of Paul Kelly's song about every city feeling the same....'In Paris, we sat at a cafe / we were drinking coffee'....by far the other lyric highlight of the afternoon was 'When We Were Young We Were Freaks.' "This next song," went Ribot's intro, "was written by the leading gay S and M poet in the East Village in the 70s. He was also my accountant at the time......"
Some cubano grooves popped up, well appreciated by your reviewer who originally came to know Ribot's work through the two outstanding albums with Cubanos Postizos (The first, self-titled, and the second "Muy Divertido"). Various instrument swapping went on throughout, as well as using each player to his full extent (J-Sax recalls the Martian-looking bassplayer pulling out some groove with big toe on keyboard on beat 1, one hand on bass and other hand on some electronic thing, I think)....
After the dramas of a forgotten battery, the session came back to earth with a final lyric contribution ("George Bush, fuck you! Tony Blair, fuck you!") before encore. In the obligatory post-gig recount, I agreed with J-Sax's early observation that it sounded pretty much like you would expect it to sound, but this didn't detract from the product one electronic bleep. Original but accessible, unusual but not confronting, highly original. Ribot is definitely one to keep an eye on.....