Filed under: Music
Nick turned me on to a singer/producer called Aloe Blacc. He’s got a good voice a way with harmony and instrumentation. He reminds of a hip-hop version of a cross between a “Let’s Get It On” Marvin Gaye and a pre-Bad Michael Jackson and a Music of My Mind Stevie Wonder. It’s not a bad combination. His arrangements are dense and his blend of English and Spanish makes for some of the best club dance I’ve heard in a long while. I made a good meal the other day with him as my soundtrack. I was dancing around our tiny kitchen and was a little more fearless than usual with my ingredients.
What I really want to talk about is Blacc’s version of Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come.” It’s the second track on the album and it’s worth talking about given my obsession with the song. He takes a risk in not doing this track coming, and while it pales in comparison to the Redding and Cooke versions, it’s trying to do something worth discussing.
The first thing to notice is the bizarre vocal harmony he and Oh No (who produced the track) use as the backing vocals. I’m pretty sure it’s all Blacc’s voice. I can’t tell how many tracks it is, but it’s at least four and they are all warped in various ways to create a nightmarish barbershop harmony. It’s surprising and attention grabbing and it grounds the whole track. Then we get the other foundation, some kind of eery string instrument (sounds like a harp) that’s been recorded at a distance and compressed till it sounds like it’s coming from a haunted house. The backing vocals and harp combine with an unspectacular hip-hop beat to create quite a sound. Blacc has decided to sing the song straight over this gothic music. I think it was the right choice, but it never quite comes together. He doesn’t have the pipes to overpower the background music he and Oh No have created. It’s not what he intended, but I can’t get the image of a Vampire with determination to reform singing from his castle, “It’s been a long time coming, but a change gonna come.” In reality, Blacc is trying to get at the struggle and darkness of the song. He doesn’t give us the pretty orchestra that we get from Sam Cooke and we don’t get the apathy and self-obsession we get from Redding. Blacc wants to zero in on the harshness of the situation. The narrator is disturbed.
Blacc chooses to end his version with a marshal chant of “It’s been a long time comin’ but a change gonna come.” This repeats over and over again. It’s a call to arms. Out of the nightmare of the rest of the track comes a resolve that a change is gonna come and the only way to get there is through a militant organization. All of the sudden the track takes on a cliche militarism and we wonder if Blacc is singing about a person or a society. It’s not a bad thing to sing about a society. The civil rights movement took Cooke’s version to be an anthem for blacks and the oppressed everywhere. But Blacc’s militant chant is cliche. His singing was never interesting enough to make the version stand out, so to throw this kind of boring ending on such a different and bizarre piece of composition is a shame.
I still like the track and I recommend his album Shine Through to anyone interested in hearing fine contemporary dance/soul/hip-hop record. He’s got a lot of potential. If he can improve his vocal performance, he’ll definitely be someone to follow for a long time.
Last night, Beki and I went to Camel Rock casino to see Pancho Sanchez. We arrived and stood in line just inside the casino and just outside of the slot machines. I hadn’t bee inside of a casino since I was nineteen and my cousin and I walked over the Niagara river to check out the Canadian casino in Niagara falls. In that visit I lost a couple dollars at black jack while Sky won enough to buy us both pizza and beer. I haven’t felt a desire to go back to a casino and as I walked amongst the slot machines on my way to the men’s room, the smell of stale cigarettes starting to cling to my jacket, I remarked that slot machines don’t look fun. Then, as I was trying to dry the toilet seat enough to allow me to apply the thin layer of protective paper, I realized that slot machines are supposed to be fun. They’re supposed to be addictive. I walked back through the slots to get back in line, counting the number of women playing alone and smoking who looked over sixty. I got eighteen, but I must say that the neon and flashing lights made counting difficult.
Twenty minutes later Beki and I had finished our discussion about whether a black Don Imus would or should have been put under as much pressure as the white Don Imus. The line began moving and we filed into a large room that’s more suited to conferences than concerts. The room was filled with chairs and we took our seats about six rows from the stage. Even though we’re in New Mexico seeing a latin jazz band in a pueblo, most everyone in the audience was between forty-five and sixty and white. There were big hairdos galore and I knew I was in for an evening of middle-aged dancing and awkward cat calls.
To my left was Beki; to my right was and empty chair. This chair was promptly filled with a woman in her early forties, but only after she sat on me. She tried to readjust herself, but sat on me again. She never actually acknowledged that she sat on me, she just kept shifting herself as though she just couldn’t get comfortable. I never received an apology.
Like all non-classical music performances this one did not start on time. Beki and I played some word games and then I turned my attention toward eavesdropping. The partner of the mad sitter was a middle-aged man (I probably don’t need this qualifier any more) who was telling stories about what sounds like a gambling addiction. He talked about the different casinos in Vegas and which are best and which are most expensive. He told stories of going back to his room to get more money from the safe and walking in on his parents becoming intimate. He talked of making friends with women so gorgeous they have to wear wigs to disguise themselves (I’d like to think they were actually men in drag). The highlight of his storytelling was the one about taking his parents and girlfriend to Vegas on holiday.
Our hero got great orchestra seats for Siegfried and Roy because he was having an affair with one of the dancers in the show. He takes his parents and girlfriend to the show and his father turns to him midway and says that one of the dancers is giving him the eye. Joking, father tells son that he should invite this beautiful woman to dinner. Little does the father know that this dancer is the person that got them the great seats and has already been intimate with the son. The story ends with the girlfriend splitting her dress trying to climb on stage after being selected as a volunteer. It is unclear whether or not they are still together.
Eventually Sanchez and his band took the stage. The band was Pancho on vocals and bongo, a trumpet player, a sax player, a trombone player, a drummer, a pianist, a percussionist, and a bassist. The bassist had an electric stand-up, something I’d never seen before. The band plays pretty straight forward, but excellent, latin jazz. They’re very tight and have great energy. The trumpet and trombone players were particularly good. Pancho had at least one inspired solo.
I’m always conflicted when I see music like this. On the one hand I want to just listen to the music, but on the other hand I feel an obligation to dance. This is, after all, dance music. Isn’t moving your body crucial to understanding and experiencing this kind of music? It seems especially necessary to dance when you’re in public. But when I dance I often miss lots of the music. I find myself focussing more on the dance rhythms than the solos and I don’t have as nice a listening experience. I made a compromise. I’d listen just listen and tap my foot for a while and when everyone else got up to dance I’d get up too. There were, of course, some folks who danced from song one. The aisles and wings were littered with women in bad jeans and men in bad shirts shaking their butts. These folks are a godsend because they are the one giving off the best energy to rest of the crowd and the band. They’re also great to watch.
Oddly enough, it wasn’t a salsa that eventually go everyone up, but Pancho abandoning his bongos for the mike and belting out a straight-ahead Stax sounding Memphis horns tune. The slightly foreign rhythms of latin dance music were abandoned and the red-blooded Americans of the audience got up to get down. Unfortunately, this was the next to last song and Sanchez killed the energy by not going right into another piece, but instead giving a very long introduction of everyone in the band. Everyone sat down for the introductions and it was only with great reluctance that they got back up for closing number.
Filed under: Music
Last night Beki and I joined some friends at the Lensic theater to see violinist Sarah Chang perform with pianist Ashley Wass. I’ve never had the chance to see one of the world’s great classical performers, so I was pretty excited to see one of the great contemporary violinists.
The Lensic theater is a nice, smaller theater located just off The Plaza in Santa Fe. They actually have lots of good stuff come through, so I’ll have to keep my eyes open for upcoming performances. The inside of the theater is meant to look like old New Mexico architecture; lots of ornamented arches in faux clay walls. When one of the Italians sat next to me he said, “It looks like Baghdad.” I’d never compared the two, but he’s got a point. Lots of arches and pointed ornaments.
The performance was incredible. She performed Beethoven’s Sonata No. 9 in A major, a new piece by Richard Danielpour called River of Light and Serge Prokofiev’s Sonata No. 2 in D major. Chang has incredible stage presence. She stomps her foot when she’s really pushing and almost dances when strong dance rhythms present themselves. In the first movement of the Beethoven she was almost writhing on stage as he bow frayed and horsehair swirled around her head. Wass was almost as impressive. His playing ranged from the perfect accompaniment to dazzling during his solos. The acoustics in the Lensic aren’t so hot, making the piano a little loud and the violin a little soft, but the performance was so powerful that those kinds of details were meaningless.
Rarely have been so transported by a live performance. I often find myself lost in music when I’m alone, listening to Beethoven’s fifth piano concerto in my dorm room or getting lost in D’Angelo’s Voodoo on my ipod on a long walk. But Chang’s playing was in some ways a revelation. You could almost feel the collective rapture of the audience. I only wish I had better words, but unfortunately such is the nature of transcendent art experiences that they aren’t reducible to mere description.
I had written off the latest The Hold Steady album, Boys and Girls in America while in China. The other day I stumbled upon a bizarre video of them playing in a gym a song from the album to a bunch of high school students. I decided to give the new record a chance, so I bought it on iTunes. I really like it. It's not a revelation like Separation Sunday, but it's filled with top notch songs. Craig Finn does a lot more singing and lot less talking/yelling. It doesn't always work, but I'm not one to get hung up on “how things used to be.” The new piano player brings adds a great deal to the music.
Beki and I watched Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. It's a fine film. Those kinds of movies are often terrible, but the jokes in this are actually funny and sometimes even insightful.
My days at work have been spent reconciling a general ledger account for all of January and February. This means that I get to listen to a lot of radio and audio books. I'm currently listening to Ann Patchett's Bel Canto. I like the book, but the first twenty pages (I'm guessing since I'm listening not reading) are sublime. It's hypnotizing. The narration travels from person to person, but not in Mrs. Dalloway way. The description of a short series of events flows unlike anything else I've read. Next time you're in a library or bookstore pick it up and read the first dozen pages.
Much of the book is about music, and it's some of the finest writing about music I've come across. Here we're dealing with the sublimity of the world's finest soprano. Music plays unifier and pacifier for a group of terrorists and their hostages. I'm always excited to come across great music writing. I guess it's because I'm so affected by music and it plays such an important part of my life. Having some one else describe their experience of art is endlessly fascinating. I often find it difficult to express the impact of music on myself and others. I'm not always sure how worth it it is to describe art (I'm all about the experience, but I'll save you my theories about art for now), but when some one like Patchett does it, I'm all for it.
I'm going to see Pan's Labyrinth tonight. Wish me luck.
Filed under: Alcohol, Concert, Dancing, Food, Music, New Mexico, Society, Soviet Defectors
Last night I went with Beki, Ben, Dave, and Leslie to see The Red Elvises. I hadn't seen the Ybor City staple in several years and was pretty stoked to see their giant red bass guitar and hear their Soviet surf-rock in all it's glory. They played at the Santa Fe Brewing Company, which has decent micro-brew, but pales in comparison to Sarasota Brewing Company. I had an extremely mediocre hamburger, which was especially disappointing because I so rarely eat meat these days. The venue was, like so many places in New Mexico, in the middle of nowhere; an oasis of light, wood, and cars.
The Elvises were as great as I remember. I'd have never thought a really loud whistle could add so much to a rock song, but the bassist used it to great effect (using his mouth, not a whistle like your middle school coach used). They had a really good keyboard/accordian player. She was short and Russian and wriggled around to great effect. The sax/flute/clarinet player was pretty good. He even played a lot of baritone sax, which I happen to love. The drummer was quite good as well. At one point all five of the band members played a drum solo that culminated in everyone leaving the stage to drink beer. It was just the drummer up there going off for five minutes. He's no less than six feet six with a huge wingspan. He moved from a funk breakdown to surf groove to a Don Cabellero freakout to his best Elvin Jones impression. It was pretty impressive.
The Elvises (which is really just the guitarist and bassist) are incredible showmen. They've taken the do-it-yourself way of conducting a music career and run with it. At the end of the show, after doing four encores without actually leaving, they announced that they were, “The Red Elvises; your favorite band!” It's amazing what two Soviet artistic defectors with a dream can do.
The crowd was a strange one. It ranged from high schoolers to middle-aged women in terrible jeans. One of these drunk forty-something crushed Beki's toe with her high-heeled black boots. The older men spent the evening trying to holler at young girls. I've often cringed at men coming on to women, but never has it been so upsetting. Everywhere I looked there were men leering at these women. I can't imagine what that must feel like. Whenever Chantal and I would ride our bikes to downtown Sarasota, she would marvel at how no one would honk at her when she was with a man. I thought that was telling, but seeing it in such full force last night took my understanding to a new level.
Today featured the best hamburger I've ever had and surrealist film. But I'll save that for tomorrow.
