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The cold is back so it is time to heat things up. It’s been a while since I saw New Cool Collective and that time it was even colder. They have a new album out that I like a lot so I was up for a nice party. This time they were playing in Paradiso but without the big band.

New Cool Collective at Paradiso Amsterdam, 30 October 2008 (Ronald says 4 out of 5)

The new record Out Of The Office has a more prominent role for guitar player Anton Goudsmit and it sounds more rockin’ than ever. The music of the band has evolved from latin-jazz to a style of their own. Sometimes there are swinging afro-beats and other times it sounds more like movie music and you feel like being in the middle of a car chase. But it never looses edge or interest. They have always played a great deal of afro-beats and even made a record with Tony Allen (CD2 of the album Trippin’) who can be considered the founder of afro-beat together with Fela Kuti. So this setup without big band works very well for their style of music. Goudsmit was joined on stage by sax player Benjamin Herman of course, David Rockefeller playing the trumpet, drum player Joost Kroon, Willem Friede on keys, Leslie Lopez on bass and the swinging percussion section Frank van Dok and Jos de Haas.

The start was a bit slow. The crowd and probably the band needed to warm up a bit. So it took a couple of songs before people started moving. At that point however the band went full force ahead and it didn’t take long before I was shaking my booty. They played a couple of songs of their new album so Goudsmit got plenty of room to show his stuff. I don’t know many musicians who show more joy and excitement when they’re playing than him. And the members of this band will always show their approval of each other’s solo’s by shouting at each other, especially Herman, which makes it a very lively performance.

Halfway the gig it was time for a surprise: they were joined by rapper Typhoon and two friends, Coen Witteveen on sax and another MC whose name I cannot recover. This was the push the crowd needed to loose their final reserves. Everyone, including the band, were loving it. I still don’t like rap music but I think with such a great band it can’t get any better. Typhoon left the stage after that but the band were on fire now. They all got to do their solos and showed no mercy. Typhoon joined them a couple of times more including during the encore. At that point the crowd couldn’t get enough and were begging for more. Goudsmit had to catch the bus according to Herman but during the last song he jumped back on stage (he did change in the meanwhile) closing the night in style.