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Saturday Night Special

Saturday Night Special image
Parent Issue
Day
15
Month
October
Year
1975
OCR Text

          At Masonic's Scottish Rite Temple, October 11

    An air of impending disaster hung over the small Scottish Rite Hall al Masonic Temple last Saturday night as a collection of budding Motor. City fusion-music stars banded together with a fledgling promoter to present "A Saturday Night Special." Like the cheap handgun for which it was named, the concert misfired more often than it hit, and the participants often had reason to hope that they could escape with their lives.

   Under promoted to an extent rarely seen these days the event drew an embarrassing small crowd to witness an ineptly produced, musically erratic show which     featured bassists Michael Henderson (Miles Davis band), who also sang his Norman Connors-Jean Carn hit "Valentine Love," and Ralphe Armstrong (Mahavishnu Orchestra); guitarists Pete Cosey (Miles Davis) and Skeets Curry (ex-Shattering Effect); drummer Les Daniels (Jean-Luc Ponty band); keyboardists (Gary Christa (Secret Lite) and Jesse Verdon; and saxophonist Norma Bell (Lyiman Woodard Organization, ex-Mahavishnu). Special guest Charles Moore on trumpet contributed a series o) pointed solos in the first half of the show (Armstrong's feature) which also benefitted from adequate microphone amplification, something which-alas-Ms. Bell was not so fortunate to obtain.

    Perhaps a bona-fide headliner could have saved L&L Productions from financial disaster, but their staging lapses would have made a full house hostile beyond belief. Someone clearly bit off quite a bit more than they could chew, and everyone from the promoters and the musicians to the audience suffered the inevitable indigestion . whIch followed.

                               --JS