DATE: Mon, 05 Dec 1994 13:58:06 CST From: KPGrah~ol.com Subject: Kim Wilson at Bottom Line
I saw Kim Wilson at the Bottom Line in NYC Satuday Night. The show was great. I can in late to the first set. It cost me $15.00 and I got to see about 30 minutes of Kim before they emptied the place and brought in the second set crowd. I gave the manager a sob story about how I missed most of the set and he let me stay.
The show was filmed for CBS Good Morning Sunday and will air in March as part of a show which talks about making Chess Studios into a museum. There will be other blues artists and a few clips of Muddy.
Kim did some fantastic stuff, including a Sonny Boy tribute and a long Pocket Rocket where he did all of his stunt work. If you don't like blues you may consider going to see Kim Wilson anyway for the challenging tricks he uses. For instance at one point he was playing melody out the left side of his mouth and rhythm out the right side. Like Mark Twain said about Wagner: It's better than it sounds. The effect was a little muddy, but it is wild that he can do it at all. He went on for about 20 minutes just doing stunts.
He did a Jimmy Reed style song where he walks through the audience playing accoustic up on the high end. He combined this with hand gestures to emphasize the expressiveness of this method. It was a conversation or so it seemed where he was talking to his girl, begging here not to leave him.
At 2 AM, walking back towards 6th avenue to get the car, there were harmonicas everywhere. There was a distinguished gray haired guy - well dressed with a date, dressed to the nines. I remember thinking that they were out of place in the grungy yuppie looking crowd. We were walking behind them and he pulls out a harp and seems to trying the both sides of his mouth thing.
I managed to smuggle in a tape recorder and I've been playing the tape ever since. My reaction is to throw away the harps. Kim Wilson says everything I want to say and he says it better.
