Dave Matthews Band Saxophonist LeRoi Moore has died

digster

A review about last night's show...sounds so incredible.

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/d...16-leroi-moore

like.echoes

That's a great write-up, thanks Dig.

Inhiding230

digster wrote:

A review about last night's show...sounds so incredible.

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/d...16-leroi-moore

I read it and cried some more..... LOL the people at work keep asking if I am ok, I told them my allergies are acting up........ They really would not understand, that I am this upset about someone I had never met.

gordon189

This is truly sad. DMB is my second favorite band, and it sucks that I'll never see them with Leroi ever again. RIP Leroi! You are missed.

AndySlash

digster wrote:

A review about last night's show...sounds so incredible.

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/d...16-leroi-moore

Dave Matthews Band's farewell to a fallen brother

Review: Hours after the untimely death of sax man LeRoi Moore, the group delivered an inspired elegy at Staples Center.

By BEN WENER
The Orange County Register
Comments 5| Recommend 22

Even if it had been a merely half-hearted performance – which it wasn't, not even close, though who'd have blamed 'em if it were? – Tuesday's inspired show at Staples Center would still linger long in Dave Matthews Band lore.

For this, sadly, was the night the group played a nearly three-hour elegy for its fallen brother, LeRoi Moore.

You could tell something was different – something wasn't quite right – from the way Matthews approached the microphone after opening with a tremendous roar through "Bartender." Clearly striving for some sort of grieving catharsis during that track's dozen-minute running time, eventually achieving a high-pitched, hollered fervency like I haven't felt shake my soul since Bono was in his prime, he suddenly looked sullen, sad-eyed, kinda lost – yet at the same time all business, as if out to impress.

"We got some bad news today," he told the quickly quieted crowd. It was a heavy blow: Saxophonist and founding member Moore – DMB's own Clarence Clemons – who had suffered health complications ever since sustaining serious injuries from an ATV crash on his Virginia farm in late June, had died earlier that afternoon at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in Los Angeles, not far from where the band would play hours later. He was 46.

"(He) gave up his ghost today," Matthews said matter-of-factly, "and we will miss him forever."

That Matthews and his mates were able to soldier on so valiantly with an often profoundly moving and largely unsentimental performance wasn't just admirable – it was downright astonishing. What's more, it spoke to the inexplicable but immense healing power of live music.

"We're gonna raise our spirits up a little bit," the generally easygoing but this night stoic icon explained to the crowd after finding his smile as "Proudest Monkey" smoothly dovetailed into the roiling syncopated figure of "Satellite" and drummer Carter Beauford started letting the spirit stir him. "It's always easier to leave than to be left," he pointed out. And yet, as he acknowledged later in the set, before a hearty cover of Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer," "There's nowhere I'd rather be than with my family on stage."

Naturally, the band turned the evening into a de facto tribute to Moore – something it has done at tour stops all summer, actually. But now there was a shift in tone: Where before heavier moments were meant to conjure good vibes for the ailing Moore, here those epics took on a distinctly funereal tone.

Granted, little about the selections was outright dour. Though accompanied by the bleak visual of raindrops cascading down a window pane, the soaring, shining finale of "So Damn Lucky," for one, felt as if the glory of heaven were opening up before the musicians' eyes. The relatively new African-derived gospel groove "Eh Hee," meanwhile, arrived like a celebration of the circle of life, with an evil-slaying Matthews insisting he'll "drop the devil to his knees."

But then there was the added resonance to the hopefulness that emerges amid the identity-crisis storm of "Dancing Nancies." There was the Johannesburg lull of "Water into Wine" to bring a tear – and there was Tim Reynolds' solos on "Proudest Monkey" and the closing "Two Step," yearning wailing like you get from Nils Lofgren on a good night, to do the crying for us.

There was the parting sorrow of the rarely aired "Loving Wings" and the baptismal cleansing of "The Maker." (The hypnotic refrain "river, rise from your sleep" that concludes that latter piece was as calming as a Ladysmith Black Mambazo lullaby.) Then there was the most wrenching moment of all, at least for me, when the ensemble dusted off "The Dreaming Tree," a moody epic that recalls the elegiac intensity of Sting's "The Soul Cages."

And yet this hardly came across like a strictly solemn occasion. How could it when Matthews also led his group (including Moore's ace replacement, Jeff Coffin from Bela Fleck and the Flecktones) through the stress-relieving exaltation of Talking Heads' "Burning Down the House" and the skin-shedding funk of Gabriel's "Sledgehammer"? How could it when for all its introverted indulgence it also made room for crowd-pleasers like "Crash into Me" and "Ants Marching" and the all-you-need-is-love optimism of "Everyday"?

"That's professionalism," I heard one fan say to another outside afterward. Yes, but there was more than the-show-must-go-on determination happening here. Who can know what Matthews, Beauford, fiddler Boyd Tinsley and bassist Stefan Lessard were remembering and feeling and mourning in song after song? What was evident in their joyful noise this night, though, was just how much staggering on stage with battered hearts might have been their only option.

Remember: They had spent the better part of two decades making music with Moore; this is how they related to one another most. First time Matthews heard Moore play, he recalled as the encore began, was in a bar in Virginia: "He leapt on the cash register – 'cause standing had become something of a chore at that point. And he played the most beautiful rendition of 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow' I've ever heard.

"If I could, I would," he added, as if to say why he wouldn't attempt it, before instead offering a haunting rendition of his own "Sister." Indeed, all that he – and they – could do here was richly revive some of Moore's favorite songs, disappear into their frameworks, savor lyrics that now had new meaning – and deliver the emotional immediacy the moment demanded.

It was brave, it was brilliant – it was a performance unlike any I've ever seen Dave Matthews Band give

Yellow Bedwetter

I hope they give us a show at MSG on 9/10/08

CServant

R.I.P. LeRoi and Thanks for the memories!

Fighting Hellfish

I can't believe they managed to play last night. That had to be difficult. They're never gonna sound the same, even if they get a replacement. I assume they've had someone playing with them this summer in his place.

Wow. reading that review made me realize just how long it's been since I was into DMB. I don't know half o f the songs from last night set, or more. I was a big fan in the late 90's, but I started to lose interest. Didn't like a few later albums

Kilgore_Trout

Fighting Hellfish wrote:

I can't believe they managed to play last night. That had to be difficult. They're never gonna sound the same, even if they get a replacement. I assume they've had someone playing with them this summer in his place.

someone said earlier that its the sax player from bela fleck... so that doesnt sound like it could be a permanent replacement... im sure theyll find someone though if they choose to continue as DMB

AndySlash

Fighting Hellfish wrote:

I assume they've had someone playing with them this summer in his place.

Yeah, Jeff Coffin of the Flecktones. He's been really good.

drew0

R.I.P. LeRoi - you'll truly be missed. I hope the band and his family and friends are all doing fine.

I have so much respect for the band to go out last night. I couldn't have done it. I guess the show was pretty emotional, with the band in tears most of it. People reported that the setlist was made up of LeRoi's favorite songs.

It should be the least of my worries, but anyone have any idea what they're planning to do as a band? They've been in the studio recording a new album and have been on tour every year since 1992...

like.echoes

drew0 wrote:

It should be the least of my worries, but anyone have any idea what they're planning to do as a band?

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say they probably haven't made any decisions just yet... it hasn't even been 24 hours.

norm

AndySlash wrote:

It was brave, it was brilliant – it was a performance unlike any I've ever seen Dave Matthews Band give

after nearly 20 shows, i agree

i wish i could tell you my thoughts right now but the more i think about last night the more i can't find the words

norm

This was posted over on Antsmarching.org.......

"I am not going into details regarding my source but many of you know i've been around this community for 12+ years and have many contacts in the dmb org.

just so you all know, the band and some of it's personel discussed what would happen and a very close "source" of mine was in that "meeting"

apparently the band knew way back in June that Leroi would probably never be able to play again with the band, at least not within the next 1-2 years as the injury was ALOT more serious than people were leading on. secondly, the band knew that this outcome, (death) was a possiblity.

all this being said, mentally, they have been prepared for this and the rest of the tour will go on as planned.

last night was the night they needed to get through and they did."

Inhiding230

By the way, cutback, thanks for sharing your experience from last night. It was very moving just to read it.

I am really surprised at how hard this has hit me today, I have broken down in tears twice and have been on the verge of tears all day. I feel like someone I knew really well is gone and I am truly heartbroken. I can't even imagine how the boys managed to play such an amazing show amidst such intense emotion.

norm

seren327 wrote:

By the way, cutback, thanks for sharing your experience from last night. It was very moving just to read it.

I am really surprised at how hard this has hit me today, I have broken down in tears twice and have been on the verge of tears all day. I feel like someone I knew really well is gone and I am truly heartbroken. I can't even imagine how the boys managed to play such an amazing show amidst such intense emotion.

if anything, last night was therapeutic...dave screaming during bartender....carter's beating the shit out of his drums....if i were in the band, i'd much prefer to play than to sit in my hotel room crying or something

blondieblue227

heard on my local news in Virginia.
sorry to hear that.
:(

AndySlash

cutback wrote:

apparently the band knew way back in June that Leroi would probably never be able to play again with the band, at least not within the next 1-2 years as the injury was ALOT more serious than people were leading on. secondly, the band knew that this outcome, (death) was a possiblity.

I really suspected as much. Not that he would pass away, obviously, but that he wasn't going to be around for awhile, if at all. I mean, the dude is a horn player who suffered a punctured lung and other major chest and body injuries. It would have been a long, long process to come back from that. I figured the band were respecting his privacy and keeping all details to a minimum. But really, the writing was on the wall if you were looking for it.

That said, I'm sure it still took a significant effort to muster the will to play the show last night (and even tonight).

I certainly don't think this is the end of the band, though, and am surprised at the number of people who think it might be or that it should be.

norm

AndySlash wrote:

That said, I'm sure it still took a significant effort to muster the will to play the show last night (and even tonight).

i too am wondering what tonight's show will be like....definitely be 2 of the strangest concerts i'll ever go to

AndySlash wrote:

I certainly don't think this is the end of the band, though, and am surprised at the number of people who think it might be or that it should be.

until i saw someone say that i hadn't given it a thought...and don't plan to

facepollution

that's way too fucking young to die dammit :(

I've listened to Bartender a few times today, gave me the major chills.