Gary Lucas and Gods and Monsters @ Joe's Pub, New York, NY 8/7/25

August 07, 2025

Bill: Gary Lucas and Gods and Monsters with special guest Luis Accorsi

Venue: Joe's Pub, New York, NY

Date: 8/7/25

Door: $36

7pm Gary Lucas and Gods and Monsters

Active: 1970 (Lucas) (New York, NY via Syracuse, NY), 1989 (Gods and Monsters) (New York, NY)

Affiliated: Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band, Jeff Buckley

Latest Release: (Gary Lucas with The Niro) "No One Must Find You Here" (Esordisco, 2019) (with Gods and Monsters) The Ordeal of Civility (Snakefork, 2011)

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Sometimes lightning strikes twice. It's stuck many more times with Gary Lucas. He's had the talent since the early 70's when he caught Leonard Bernstein's ear playing lead guitar in the Yale Symphony Orchestra for the 1973 premiere in Vienna MASS which featured an all-student cast. He joined Captain Beefheart's Magic Band circa 1980 until Beefheart retired from music. Gods & Monsters were founded in 1989 and Jeff Buckley was an early member before moving on to an all-too-brief solo career.

Gary Lucas has kept on with Gods and Monsters all these years. It is more of a jazz band than anything: they will break out Miles Davis (some of "Jack Johnson") or Alice Coltrane ("Journey In The Satchidananda") without being uptight about it.

Members have come and gone but this trio has G Calvin Weston who played in Ornette Coleman's Prime Time as a teenager and continued with him from 1976-1988 before playing with James Blood Ulmer, John Lurie James Carter, Marc Ribot and a host of others. Bass player Ernie Books is a contemporary of Lucas and played in The Modern Lovers on that classic debut. He also played wtih Arthur Russell from which Lucas covered "Let's Go Swimming." The set closed with Buckley's "In The Cantina."

For me, the greatness of this trio is the instrumental ensemble work. You just don't hear many straight guitar/bass/drum rock based jazz bands of this caliber. It blows my mind that I somehow never saw Gary Lucas play live until today.

Lucas was in the back of my head to see because I wrote about a retrospective of his from a while back and I noticed the other day he was playing Joe's Pub. It's been years since I've been there, in fact when the box office sent me an email, the address was about 5 addresses ago. Gary went on 7pm SHARP starting by himself with a Buckley cover while I was wasting time getting a walk up ticket. I thought there was supposed to be an opener that I was shooting to be on time for, but Luis Accorsi only joined Gary mid-set for a song called "Taxi To The Dark Side." His website says his band is the Flux Machine but I could have sworn there was another name given as his current band. I did not know they have a forthcoming (released?) EP together entitled The Cat's Out Of The Bag.

FOR FURTHER REVIEW:

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