Commander Spoon – live at ESNS, Grotingen, Netherlands – January 19, 2022 – VPRO –
Commander Soon, in concert from the ESNS Festival in Grotingen, Holland going on this weekend, with this one broadcast live on January 19th of this year.
Loosely billed as a hybrid of “Jazz, electronica and Hip-hop”, Commander Spoon takes me right back to somewhere around 1973-1974 and the likes of Soft Machine, Caravan, Supersister and a whole host of other Progressive Bands from the UK and Continental Europe were cramming on to stages, festivals and clubs and making music that grabbed your head with both hands and took you somewhere unexplainable.
This was the essence of ProgRock at the time and a lot of bands were doing it. In the U.S. to a considerably lesser degree, the bands across the Atlantic were dominating the playing field – and even though being able to listen to your favorite Prog band on the radio or snapping up a copy of the latest took more than casual effort, there were still pockets of devotees who hung on every note and lived from album to album.
That’s not to say Commander Spoon is a “tribute band” by any stretch of the imagination, what they do is remind you of just how much of a difference the presence of the ProgRock genre had on the world in general in the early 1970s.
So listening to this, admittedly short, concert appearance hit on a whole pile of harmonious and wonderfully familiar music made by those inspired virtuosos who set the world on its ear, if even for a little while.
Although with most festivals there is a goodly chunk of mediocre and some downright awful music you feel somewhat compelled to sit and listen to, bands like Commander Spoon pick up the genre, move it 10 Degrees west and let it bask in the sun.
This gig is like running into a bunch of old friends; the ones who made a difference.
Crank it up and enjoy.
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