Weekend Ideas: March 7, 2014

Music can thrive on collaborative spontaneity, which we can celebrate this week in many forms, from rock to funk to jazz to Americana. Even West African singer/guitarist Habib Koite has shaken up his band (apart from longtime bassist Abdul Berthe) for his semi-annual World Music/CRASHarts booking at the Somerville Theatre on Friday. And judging from this recent clip, the virtuoso Koite maintains his hypnotic, textural reach.

You can’t stomp through three hours of roof-raising funk like George Clinton does with his sprawling cast of Parliament-Funkadelic without spontaneity. Expect madness like this when Clinton’s P-Funk invades House of Blues on Friday. And on the jazz front, the Regattabar offers Four Generations of Miles Davis with an esteemed cast that includes drummer Jimmy Cobb (the sole survivor from 1959’s classic Kind of Blue), saxophonist Sonny Fortune, bassist Buster Williams and guitarist Mike Stern, who fired up Miles’ ’80s funk-rock yet conveys bebop sensibility. That’s just one reason why this mixed bag of sidemen appears to click like they do at this recent concert; they’ll play both Friday and Saturday.  And for the first time in more than a decade, locally based singer Tanya Donelly plans to reunite with Throwing Muses (and play an opening set) when the Muses play the Sinclair on Friday – and Monday. Donelly co-founded the band with her step-sister Kristin Hersh three decades ago in Newport, R.I., and it’s sweet to contemplate the two spontaneously blending voices again, although Throwing Muses also prove vital as a continuing trio on last year’s Purgatory/Paradise and this recent live clip.

The rest of the weekend gets a little jammy, starting with the arena-ready Americana of the Avett Brothers at the TD Garden on Saturday. The Avetts are teaming with kindred spirits Old Crow Medicine Show and are bound to combine forces for a big ole hootenanny based on this video from a recent show. Speaking of brothers, the same night at the Paradise Rock Club, guitarist Luther Dickinson has put aside the Black Crowes to regroup with his drumming sibling Cody in the North Mississippi Allstars, reigniting their hill country blues-rock like a finely skewed marching band based on this recent clip. And on Sunday, out at the Bull Run Restaurant in Shirley, the seasoned boys of Los Lobos toast their 40th anniversary with an acoustic date along the lines of their new album Disconnected in New York City.

Finally, for our Thursday Throwback, it’s also the 40th anniversary of Genesis’ The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, honored in a fresh feature posting on The New Yorker’s website. That prog-rock concept opus was the band’s last album with Peter Gabriel, who will be inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame (for the second time) as a solo artist in April. Alas, there’s little decent footage to be found from the 1975 Lamb tour, but here’s a full 1973 Genesis show with Gabriel in high quality, costumes galore.


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