The Black Crowes - Todd’s Place, New Haven, CT 4/30/90 (video)

I’m not sure how I’d explain how one detects a band playing live that’s really on fire, but it generally gives me goosebumps, makes me want to stand up and glues me to the performance. There’s a Black Crowes show from within a year from the one in question that’s like this, from the first four or five minutes you know this is their night. This Todd’s Place gig is the Black Crowes either on an average or off night, I couldn’t get drawn into this if my life dependent on it. Mostly early material delivered without much flair. Possibly a band who hasn’t quite separated themselves yet from the classic rock that influenced them.

Dave Holland Quartet - Propstei St. Gerald, Austria 1990 (video)

Holland’s Quintet and Big Band shows in the last ten years have been some of the best modern jazz on the planet, music that seems to have as strong an Ornette Coleman influence as the usual suspects. It’s playful, challenging, sophisticated and, if I’m not mistaken, even Grammy award winning, but all of these qualities are in their early stages with this quartet date, featuring the inimitable Steve Coleman on sax. While the style here is pretty similar, I don’t detect the depths that would come into it later with the larger ensembles, nor the interplay that makes the compositions (say from Not for Nothin’, What Goes Around etc) like little puzzles. Needless to say, I was surprised to find myself a little bored with this and I’m generally pretty happy with anything Holland’s involved with.