Fans lined up roughly single file along Santa Monica Boulevard and up North Doheny Drive in West Hollywood, CA. The Troubadour had seen plenty like it before for the likes of Buffalo Springfield, Elton John, the Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, to name a handful. Yet, how many of those crowds had queued around the block by 8 p.m. on a Friday night?
There was a good reason for that on the first Friday of February, two good reasons, really, as neither end of the double bill featuring Goose and Pigeons Playing Ping Pong was to be missed. For the better part of five hours (with two breaks), these two East Coast collectives delighted folks at Doug Weston’s legendary 500-capacity nightclub with jams spanning from serious to silly, to seriously silly.
Goose began the evening by giving Southern California a gander at their style of psychedelic jazz-fusion. The Norwalk, Connecticut-based quartet treated the audience to a terrific display of talent and instrumentation while traversing their small-but-growing repertoire. They pulled songs freely from their debut album–2016’s Moon Cabin - with captivating tracks like “Arcadia” and “Lead the Way” along with newer tunes like 2019’s “All I Need”, “Time to Flee”, and “Wysteria Lane”, along with the recently added “Hot Tea”. Goose also managed to capture the attention of fans young and old with covers of Marvin Gaye’s “Don’t You Do It” and Billy Joel’s “Movin’ Out.”
