From: The Beacon ( a Wilkes University publication)

Music Review: Poogie Bell Band delightful at Jazz Cafe
Nick Podolak
Issue date: 1/27/08 Section: Entertainment

On average, I'll usually spend around $35 during a night out on the town in Wilkes-Barre, wasting my cash on greasy appetizers, mixed drinks, and monster ballads on the jukebox.

But after seeing a flyer in the newspaper offering a 14-16 oz. lobster tail dinner for $24.95 and $1 bottle Lions' Heads at the River Street Jazz Cafe, I realized that this was an offer I could not pass up.

However, I didn't go to the Jazz Cafe last Friday night for the lobster tail dinner. Nor did I go for the $1 bottle Lions' Heads. I was there to take in an evening of "A Funk Jazz Show" with The Poogie Bell Band.

Poogie (rhymes with fugee) is a world class jazz, R&B, and hip-hop drummer who has worked with the likes of David Bowie, Chaka Khan, Marcus Miller, Roberta Flack, and Erykah Badu, just to name a few. The New York native was exposed to music since he was born, due largely in part to his father being a jazz musician and music teacher. Poogie's early appearance on The Mike Douglas Show with Pearl Bailey at the tender age of five sealed the deal.

Needless to say, as an aspiring drummer myself, I could not wait to see what Poogie could do behind the kit…and I was not disappointed.

Joining his fellow band members, sax player Jacob Yoffee, keyboardist Howie Alexander, guitarist Chris Parker, and Kevin Barefoot playing the low notes, Poogie emerged stage right through a curtain and sat behind a modest drum set, cast in a purple hue from the lighting on stage. He's a big man, resembling an aged ?uestlove from The Roots, and after a quick holdup from a fan who hopped on stage to engage in a conversation with the drummer at the most inopportune time, (you gotta love Wilkes-Barre natives), Poogie addressed the crowed with his high, playful voice.

"Hello, Wilkes-Barre! Thank you for coming out on this cold winter's night."

Then, with a few clicks of the sticks, Poogie and his crew opened up their first show of the New Year with a nice little funk number as the heads in the crowd bobbed in unison with the big man. When Poogie plays, he seems so happy, closing his eyes and nodding his head back and forth to the groove. Perhaps my friend put it best when he described the band's sound as "the score to a seventies cop flick and an adult film." Perfect!

Poogie kept things interesting, switching between full-bodied rim shots on the snare to calming rim clicks, and often wowed the crowd with short, but powerful, mid-song solos, from furious drum rolls across the kit to John Bonham-esque triplets with a thundering bass drum. The band especially shone in a tune called Redd Foxx, dedicated to the late comedian, as Parker let loose on the guitar in a slick solo while Alexander transformed the sound of the keyboard into a deep chuch organ chirp…very cool. Other highlights included a cover of Herbie Hancock's "Actual Jam," and Poogie's very own song about his hometown New York Knicks, titled "Knickerbocker Bling."

The only hitch during the evening occurred when Poogie lost one of his sticks during the first song, but he kept time with his hi-hat and quickly retrieved a new one from his bag to finishing the song in style.

Poogie will return.

Grade: B+

Michael Glabicki from Rusted Root to play at the Jazz Cafe tomorrow.

what is funk jazz and what does it mean too you????? please let us know