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I have no idea if that's spelled right, but it's supposed to mean something like "and the Flemish ones," because Ad and company are doing a set of Jacques Brel covers tonight. In addition to his regular bassist, the dreamy Eric Donohue, Ad has a drummer, a keyboard player, a violin player, and someone who plays a couple of different horns in different songs. If you're not familiar with Jacques Brel, as I wasn't, it's clever, bitter, wistful mid-20th century pop songs. At least, the half of the set in English is; the ones in French could be pompous or zany, and I wouldn't know it. The clever/bitter lyrics are, of course, perfect for Ad Frank. I actually like Ad's songwriting better--I think he has the greater gift for melodic hooks--but these songs are, oddly enough, better suited to Ad's voice than his own songs are. It's the passion in them, which causes him to cut loose in a way that he never seems to, and it really sounds great. As a result, I'm really focused on him, and mostly don't notice what the band is doing, but when I do, it is invariably because someone has done something very cool: a great, subtle violin part, say, or a rolling left hand piano part or incongruously rocking drums. I even like the horns most of the time, and I almost never like horns. We need to do laundry before leaving for New York tomorrow, so we bolt before Ziaf come on.
