I trekked over to the Saxon Pub last night (actually this morning) for a midnight show of the latest Austin supergroup, MPTU. The lineup is Pat Mastelotto (from King Crimson, XTC, Mr. Mister), Malford Milligan (Storyville), Phil Brown (Little Feat), Mark Andes (Canned Heat, Heart and others). I joined a small crowd of approximately 25 people, to listen to the 75 minute show.
They opened the set with instrumentals, a rendition of Jeff Beck's Pump. Phil is mainly a Strat player and is obviously into Beck, Clapton, and Allan Holdsworth, and is also a great singer. I'm going to have to go back and see if he's on any of the Little Feat albums that I own. He was surprised that I recognized his quoting of Holdsworth's song, Fred, when I spoke to him after the show.
Malford's singing as always, was amazing. He did manage to fit some Storyville songs like Bitter Rain, into the set. For the remainder, I have to admit that I didn't recognize too many of their songs, yet. So I guess I will have to buy the MPTU CD when it's released, but I believe they played everything up on the myspace page. They sounded great, and delivered the goods despite the crowd size.
P@ surprised me with his versatility. I have seen him with KC, ProjeKct 3, Terry Bozzio and KTu. All progressive or "art" rock type of setups. In MPTU, it's straight forward rock, blues and soul. As always, his drumming is powerful, but tasteful.
One thing is for sure, I will try and catch them again, next Tuesday, and at Momo's and/or Antones this month. I'm hoping that perhaps I will be allowed to take a Picture or two, at a future show.
