Live Review: The Aristocrats at Gramercy Theatre (2024-08-02)
A quackin' good time with the prog rock trio
Event Details:
Date: August 2, 2024
Venue: Gramercy Theater (Manhattan)
Ticket Price: $35.25
Artists: The Aristocrats
Update, Guthrie Govan is real and he is really good at guitar. A legend in his own right, Guthrie Govan has influenced many of my favorite guitarists but seems to have a fairly minimal presence in the modern day media landscape and people almost speak about in a mythical sense. In the videos and images that do exists he looks like if someone was creating a guitar player in a video game. His giant mop of thin curly white hair and matching beard on top of this tiny little body, he could be one of the final bosses in a quest to become the greatest guitarist.
The Aristocrats are a trio featuring Guthrie, Bryan Beller on bass and Marco Minnemann on drums. All three are incredibly talented at their respective instruments but impressive songwriters as well. They are currently touring to promote their latest album Duck and the kick drum comically featured the duck from their album cover. I find that these bands or artists that have mastered their instruments as well as these three have generally have a good sense of humor to accompany. Maybe it’s part of being an instrumental band and keeping your audience sufficiently entertained in between the virtuosic playing.
There was no opening act for the show and The Aristocrats were scheduled to play a two hour set so I knew we were in for a treat. They began the set with first four tracks from their new album and in between songs the member of the band that wrote the song would give a brief introduction about what inspired them to write it. Often times the music evoked a very specific moment or sound, such dealing with noisy construction in “Here Come the Builders” or a chilling with a quacking duck on “Sittin' With A Duck On A Bay”, a reference to the great Otis Redding song “(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay”.
Although many of us were there to see Guthrie’s buttery smooth shredding, I may have left more impressed by the performance of drummer Marco Minnemann. It seemed like he was the primary songwriter on many of the songs I enjoyed most and his drum solo midway through the set was mind-blowing. He is a very creative drummer and was able to create a variety of percussive sounds by utilizing every bit of his equipment, including some cool trickery with the drumsticks.
As told, they played for two hours and did a fun crowd participation segment during the second to last song. Using a rubber chicken and squeaky pig toy, they split the crowd in the middle and had every make pig and chicken sounds in the tune of “Another Brick in The Wall, Pt. 2” by Pink Floyd. It was a fun show and the crowd was locked in from beginning to end.
Cheers and keep rocking!