Tower of Power in Lunchbucket

The Oakland band Tower of Power funked into Lunchbucket last night and played the Square Circle. It was, by all accounts, a fabulous show. There are fewer tighter bands on the whole planet. And Tower of Power is possibly the best soul band there is. Now that James Brown has passed on. The TOP horns are legendary and showed why. Roger Smith, the keyboardist, gave a master class in the course of several burning solos. And David Garibaldi, the drummer, was just rock solid and funky all night.

Here's a video of TOP, doing their first and maybe best-known hit, "What Is Hip?" To give you an idea what the band's like. No, it's not from the Lunchbucket show. There are some additions to the band in this video. Carlos Santana was not with the band in Lunchbucket.

And one other piece of not-so-trivia. There is a very brief view of Michael Bogart, the lead trumpet, in this video. His house burned down yesterday in the California fires. Can you imagine having that happen? While you're on the road? And he still played the show last night, and blew all the horn players (of which there were quite a few) in the audience away.


Update 10/23/07: I had to change the video because the one I originally put in here suddenly became no longer available. (Actually, I think it's the same show, but I didn't pay close enough attention to be sure...)