September 12, 2005

NightCrawler Rocks at Logan's Alley

We decided to go out for a quick drink last night at around 8:00 and headed up to Michigan Street. Logan's Alley was selected and the atmosphere/music was decent. Drink prices were cheap enough, but the kicker was the selection. There were probably 20 beers on tap, many of them local as well as imports, and there were almost 100 beers from around the world available in bottles.

As is happens, Sunday night is Live Music at Logan's, and as it happens the band playing was called NightCrawler. We got to the bar at around 8:15 and normally would have been about ready to go by 9:00, but the band started playing and they were awesome. It was just two guys - Max Morrison on guitar/vocals and Dan Jaccobazzi on winds (i.e.- flute/sax). They were covering a lot of classic rock songs, and everything had a very mellow flavor as a result of the acoustic guitar and lack of percussions. Of the bands they covered, the ones I can remember are Beatles, America, Donovan, Lou Reed, Men At Work, Paul Simon, Neil Young, Allman Brothers, "Shanty Song," "Baker Street," Gordon Lightfoot, Jimmy Buffet, John Lennon, a sweet instrumental of Van Morrison's "Moondance*," and of course Jethro Tull.

Both players seemed to be quite comfortable with the most of the songs, and Jaccobazzi's wind instruments skills were pristine at times - his rendition of the sax solos from Gerry Rafferty's "Baker Street" were unbelievable, spot on. Of course, since someone was playing the flute lots of people were shouting out "Jethro Tull!" They saved Locomotive Breath for the second set. Definitely going to make efforts to check those guys out again.

*That's "Moondance," not to be confused with King Harvest's "Dancing in the Moonlight."

P.S. - Both shows were free, but NightCrawler was better than Eddie Money the previous night at Rosa Parks Circle - although the big outdoor concert did have its appeal, and that's a compliment to NightCrawler not a dis of Eddie Money.

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