It’s been a couple of years since we last saw The Jeffrey Lewis & Peter Stampfel Band at the Brudenell and along with the Wave Pictures ‘Franic’ there’s a couple of female band members now, who add a new dimension. The new CD ‘Hey Hey it’s…..’ was recorded in a week end earlier this month – perhaps the soonest I’ve ever perchased an album after it was recorded.
First up was the excellent ‘Misty’s Big Adventure’ – It was beautifully sunny outside but they were dressed for winter. “There’s usually 8 of us but tonight you’ve got 3” but you wouldn’t have known if they hadn’t’ve told us. Some a capella songs like ‘Crumpled man’ happily slotted in amongst the rockier numbers like ‘Love has a beginning a middle and an end’, all sang with a sense of cheeky knowingness – I thought they were great!
Had a quick chat with Peter Stampfel at the bar, such a nice guy. Jeffrey Lewis has been hanging out with him for a while now and obviously loves his company. He asks him questions about the old days between songs “So how much did you make out of the ‘Easy Rider’ soundtrack?” “Nothing” “You should go to Peter Fonda and ask for a thousand Bucks or something, he couldn’t say no!” “I’ll make a note of that and give it a try”. The band sang some songs from old 40’s commercials that Peter had been “singing in the van”. Jeff is off to do a gig with Daniel Johnston at the week end and they played ‘True love will find you in the end’ illustrated by Jeff (the other illustrated song was a hillariously X-rated tale………
There was a lot of new stuff and some old favourites tonight. A new song about ‘Beatniks’ “I never met a beatnik in my life!” mentined that as well as Gauloise and berret’s they all have ‘Orgone boxes’ which led on to them doing a cover of everybodies favourite Hawkwind song (well, mine anyway) ‘Orgone Accumulator‘ with Misty’s sax player joining them for the madness. Got the CD at the end and had a chat to Drummer Heather who has a great tattoo of Paul Klee’s angel on her shoulder. They are all such nice people
Bob the Chiropodist