Review: Marissa Licata And The Ragtag Collection Set The Stage Ablaze With STRINGS ON FIRE At Chelsea Table + Stage

Heigh Ho my merry rainbow readers, it is I Bobby Patrick your rainbow reviewer here to put the silent T in cabareT and bring you ALL the Tea...

... And the tea this week, my angels, is for VIOLIN - as in the one Marissa Licata used to THRILL the house at Chelsea Table + Stage Sunday night with her band The Rag Tag Collection - Bob Lanzetti on guitar, Dan Oestreicher on baritone sax, Nori Naraoka on bass, and Joey Peebles on drums. These musicians had the eager (if underpopulated) crowd completely gobsmacked, and gave this rainbow writer the WOWS all evening. Making their debut as a group, the Rag Tag Collection played a set that included several traditional Eastern European pieces so old and so traditional that no one knows who wrote them! Using jazz improvisation and on-the-fly musical switch-ups, The TAGS created its own brand of World-Folk Fusion. With the makeup and approach of a classic five-piece jazz combo, each musician took improv solo turns throughout the night, proving one-half of their consummate musicianship while proving the other half by playing together. This music was as loud and aggressive as any modern jazz band could make it, only with the driving undercurrent of ancient folk phrases deeply embedded in their ancestral, original, and familiar works, like Piazzolla's LIBERTANGO. Basically, what The TAGS played was some of the purest music it has ever been this rainbow boy's pleasure to hear - ancient sounds with irresistible modern jazz beats and freedom.

...And speaking of LIBERTANGO, this third number on their set list demonstrated the band's incredible communication with each other, as they passed phrases and solos back and forth, giving the Argentinian piece an almost "Roma Violin & Accordion" virtuosity, until Marissa moved her bow behind her instrument's bridge to play on the tight one-inch of strings not really meant to be played upon. This scratchy and intrusive noise penetrating the tango tune we all have heard before was not a "pretty" sound, but it was electrifying. Their very next number introduced their recently released original single CAT'S CRADLE, penned by drummer, Peebles, and Licata, herself. With Marissa playing a great deal in unison with Oestreicher's bari sax, the marvelous composition rang out with an acoustical overtone, a phenomenon that made it sound like there was a trumpet in the mix... but there wasn't. This can happen in the right spaces, with musicians that are truly in sync and hitting it together in brilliant ways. It happened again with Peebles' original number DREAM CATCHER, where 5 musicians were down in the music so deep they began to sound like 6... and that, my dear ones, is not nothing.

Wrapping the night with Bob Lanzetti's LOVE THEME (from the new independent feature film NOSFERATU), the Tags went on a ride from thrillingly incomprehensible and mind-challenging to almost hymn-like and oddly familiar - but not familiar - strains. Encoring with a time-honored Klezmer piece, the group took it in turn to play some of the most exciting improv solos Little Bobby has ever heard, fulfilling their mission by fusing hard-core jazz with Jewish Soul Music.

In short, dear Bobby readers, Marissa Licata and The Rag Tag Collection raised the f'ing roof of Chelsea Table + Stage and gave the night's audience some of their brand of WORLD FOLK FUSION, then left the room hungry for oh, so much more. We hope that this little love letter to this group will inspire our readers to look them up, follow them around, and become regular listeners to their flawless sounds because they get ...

5 out of 5 Rainbows

Read Michael Walters' Interview with Marissa: HERE

Listen to The Rag Tag Collection's New Single, CAT'S CRADLE: HERE

Follow Marissa's InstaPictograms: HERE

Marissa Licata Photo by, Stephen Mosher

(Due to camera malfunction, we were not able to get any photos of Marissa Licata and The Rag Tag Collection in action... so we will just have to go to their next show to get some, and that won't suck. We borrowed a photo of ML from Stephen Mosher. Sorry, dear hearts. BP.)

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