Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Zagreb / Green Gold Club / Croatia
Concert date: 11.05.2015
Attendance: 400
Ticket price: 16,00€
One of the greatest and most revered drummers in the world, Simon Phillips, is going through a real creative bloom. After parting ways with art rock giants Toto in 2012, he revived his musical project Protocol. Two years ago he already crisscrossed Europe with the comeback album »Protocol II«, and now, two years on, the famous drummer has put together the third act of the project with his well-oiled team of top-notch musicians, and fittingly and meaningfully titled it »Protocol III«.
The tour called »Second Orbit« only »grazed« Slovenia, with the nearest stops for Simon Phillips and company in Graz, Austria, and Zagreb, Croatia. This time the latter turned out to be a much handier choice for us, if only because of the lower travel costs. Green Gold Club in Zagreb sits in an area full of swanky office buildings and hotels. It felt really odd when you walked into the building, because escalators led you up to the concert hall. You could be forgiven for thinking you’d taken a wrong turn into Ljubljana’s City Park.
Simon Phillips (drums), Steve Weingart (keyboards), Andy Timmons (guitar) and Ernst Tibbs (bass) kicked off the show around half past nine in the evening. The venue was just the right size to take in some 400 fans of jazz-rock fusion, and progressive rock too, who filled the room nicely.
The guys played the entire new album »Protocol III«, and Simon Phillips, as is his habit, stepped to the front of the stage three times to entertain the crowd with a few anecdotes and funny stories from his rich musical career. This time too, he was of course accompanied by that innate British sense of dark humor.
And the playing is divine. Speechless. Dazzling brilliance. Incredible precision, feel, subtlety and above all experience. The elements of spontaneity and surprise, the implantation of the unexpected, shone in full. A gallery of endless jazzy variations and breathtaking solos. Relaxed and easygoing. The quartet enjoyed themselves immensely and clearly felt great. Some extremely tricky passages they played with feather-light ease. And the crowd, of course, was in ecstasy, giving back full-blooded applause. Throughout. Great energy and really a feeling of elation and fulfillment slowly settling into the listener, the sense that you’d come to exactly the kind of concert that can offer you the most it possibly can. And all that for a ridiculously low ticket price.
All four musicians are top class. They’re exceptional in their versatility, in the sound that accompanies and builds their presence on stage and gives each instrument a special place in the overall picture. A place that is essential to the very existence of Protocol II. For a moment it looked as if the instruments had literally grown onto the members of the quartet Protocol II. The driving force behind the incredibly positive energy and vibes in the venue was the gift of playful lucidity that accompanies all four musical aesthetes. Over a show lasting a good two hours, it didn’t let up for a second. They keep watching each other. Constantly. Meanwhile they pull all sorts of faces and deliberately tease one another, even trying to throw each other off. It’s incredible how much looseness and fun these four guys manage to create in their show, on top of all the tasks that are demanding for both the ear and the eye.
As the peak of this more than brilliant two-hour performance, we can take the moment when Phillips first demanded absolute silence from the audience. He walked almost to the edge of the stage and started pounding the floor with his drumsticks. Slowly he moved toward his drums on the right side of the stage, and as he went he used every single stage object within reach to keep up the pounding. That’s how he slowly made it to his kit, which he thoroughly »rattled« in percussionist style, worked his way to the stool and, in a grand finale, delivered one more outstanding drum solo, through which the quartet then let loose on stage one last time. In the obligatory encore the guys played two more songs from the previous album »Protocol II«, namely Moments of Fortune and Wildfire.
This concert by Simon Phillips and his Protocol also passed in the blink of an eye. So many things simply happen on stage at once, enough to keep any music fan fully occupied, that the music just carries you, and carries you, and carries you. It leads you into its own unique world of magic. The unique musical language of the brilliant, one-of-a-kind drum wizard Simon Phillips and his three virtuoso bandmates. In Zagreb that night we dreamed every sweetest dream of primal magic that a jazz-rock fusion experience can deliver. Let’s hope maestro Phillips and the crew will be back somewhere near our parts soon, because their shows are the kind of musical adventure you can never get enough of or tire of. An experience of musical perfection.
Photo gallery
