Stormy Mondays: Fareed Says Goodbye

On New Year’s Eve Fareed Haque played his final gig with Garaj Mahal. As a founding member of the group, Fareed was front man and lead guitarist alike, a jazz master at his funky finest. In the collectivist spirit of the band, they all wrote material and every night’s set list was a round robin affair.

True enough, the band has never been the same since Alan Hertz left a couple years back – one of Garaj Mahal’s many strengths was that it was very much the sum of its parts, and when those parts all clicked (and they clicked 90% of the time), magic happened. Kai, Eric and Sean Rickman plan to continue with the name, but it just won’t be the same (when Hertz was in the band, the trio was known as the Geo Trio) – no Poodle Factory, no Gulam Sabri, no guistar.

I certainly wish all the band members well and will make every effort to see any one of them – GM has long since turned a cold shoulder to the Northest -but right now it’s time to celebrate Fareed with one of my favorite 40 minutes of music from any band. You never knew what you would get with Garaj Mahal: a funk attack, a wild dance party, a psychedelic blossoming, a cool jazz gig or some conglomeration of elements – it was part of the fun.

In late March of 2005, while on a quick eastern swing, the quartet laid down a slick, psychedelic suite of music at the Knitting Factory in NYC: Lush Life Jam > Frankly Frankie Ford > Tomorrow Never Knows. It starts with a great little jazzman rap from the man himself before spiraling out into the cosmos. I just love it and you will too. As always, enjoy!

Related Content

3 Responses

  1. loooooooove garaj mahal! i was at the last 5 shows/nye, and they were all great! miss alan, will never be the same, but love sean, love the band in any form, will love the trio, will love fareed in his new projects “mathgames” and otherwise.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent Posts

New to Glide

Keep up-to-date with Glide

Twitter