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Brooklyn Bowl London Opening: RECAP

Brooklyn Bown Entrance If you haven't yet gone to Brooklyn Bowl (in NYC, London, or Vegas (coming soon)), it is a must.

 

We're just back from a three-night run in London for the grand opening weekend of the Brooklyn Bowl, performing under the moniker "Brooklyn Bowl All Star Players" feat. Antibalas and Friends. It definitely turned out to be that way: Guesting on guitar was Scott Metzger and on bass Dave Dreiwitz. Holding down the drums was longtime Antibalas associate Geoff Mann. We were also joined by London-based trumpets Nick Etwell (Dirty Six) and Robin Hopcraft (Soothsayers, FELA! Musical-London). On Friday and Saturday night we were joined by wordsmiths Musa Okwonga and Joshua Idehen (Benin City), to perform their song "This is London," a song that they wrote nearly 10 years ago using samples of Antibalas's "Pay Back Africa."

Each night the band performed 3-4.5 hours of music with an Antibalas backbone, but taking much more experimental and sometimes rocked-out approach to the songs like we've never done before. To keep things fresh, we debuted covers of Black Sabbath's "War Pigs", "The Taking of the Pelham 1,2,3," Little Beaver's "I Can Dig it Baby," Aaron Neville's "Hercules," as well as some Antibalas numbers that haven't seen the light of day in years.We recorded audio from Friday and Saturday night: stay tuned to our SoundCloud page for updates in the near future.

Congratulations to Brooklyn Bowl on a stellar opening weekend and thanks for taking good care of us.