The first Jamaica Day Outdoor Reggae Festival already has its second fest scheduled for July 13, 2008. But at times on Sunday, it seemed as if the event would barely survive its debut.
The family-friendly event was held at the Anne Arundel County Fairgrounds, which is between Baltimore and the District, but not really close enough to either to attract the areas' sizable West Indian communities. Turnout for the festival was a fraction of what it could have been. On the vast expanse of green in front of the concert pavilion there was plenty of room to have a picnic, stretch your legs -- heck, play a game of tackle football, as some kids did.
Another problem was the day's length: doors opened at 11 a.m. and were scheduled to close at 11 p.m. The live music was slated to begin at 4 p.m., but it was 7:50 p.m. when "Reggae Idol" winner Kimberly Gregory finally took the stage. People were irritated by the late start, not to mention the heat and, later, the Heineken disappearing from concessions.
Plus, there were no lights onstage for much of the show; the sound cut out at times; the Positive Vibrations backing band didn't really know all the songs; and artist sets were cut painfully short to make the curfew that was suddenly 10 p.m., not 11.
Still, slowly, if unsurely, the event began to groove -- simply because the music was so irresistible. Classic reggae artists Alton Ellis (resplendent in a full suit and hat) and Leroy Sibbles (from the Heptones) and venerable dancehall stars Admiral Bailey and Professor Nuts simply did what they do, with good humor and grace, considering the obstacles they had to overcome.
There must have been serving Red Bull-infused chickpea curry Sunday night at the Patriot Center. How else to explain the enthused screams that Bollywood superstar composer A.R. Rahman was still receiving three hours -- three high-energy hours -- into his epic performance?
Rahman and his 66 dancers, singers and musicians began their concert at 8 p.m. and wrapped up at 11:20 p.m., and nearly the entire not-quite-sold-out Patriot Center crowd remained, and stayed pumped, until the confetti fell.
All ages and even entire families from the Washington area's Indian community danced and sang along to more than 30 Rahman hits -- and they're all hits. The 41-year-old composer-singer-instrumentalist is one of the most important and popular artists in modern Indian music, mixing traditional sounds with hip-hop and dub-inflected electronica. He's a prolific genius who has scored more than 100 Bollywood films and sold a bazillion recordings: In 2003 the BBC reported that he's sold more than 100 million albums, and in 2002 the Indian news site Rediff.com wrote that he's moved more than 200 million cassettes.
Based on the ethnic make-up of the Patriot Center audience, not many people outside of those of Indian descent have a clue about Rahman, but that may change. He's slowly making inroads into the non-Indian populace, having collaborated with Andrew Lloyd Webber on the musical "Bombay Dreams," scoring "The Lord of the Rings" stage production and having his smash song "Chaiyya Chaiyya" open the Spike Lee film "Inside Man."
While the slamming "Chaiyya Chaiyya" received the evening's largest ovation -- and some of the audience's fiercest rump shaking -- it was just the 17th song in the set. And for all the fabulous dancing and singing, by the end of the grand concert, this pasty gringo was exhausted. I should have had the curry.
Persian music is usually presented in formal places like the Kennedy Center, filled with well-dressed patrons resting in comfortable seats. That's why it was great to hear the music of Iranian American singer-guitarist Haale Wednesday at the Black Cat's frills-free backstage, because her raw sound owes as much to '60s psychedelic rock as it does to the ancient Middle East.
The 33-year-old Haale is just beginning to make her mark nationally, but she's a star on the rise. She has played guitar since 1996 but started incorporating Persian lyrics and music into her folk-rock repertoire only at the turn of the millennium. Her first recordings came out in January, and the two five-song EPs show her split musical personality to wonderful effect. The "Morning" EP is sung mostly in Persian and features the words of mystic poets Rumi and Bahar, while the more drone-folky "Paratrooper" is primarily in English.
In concert, the Eastern side of Haale's musical personality came through strongest, even on English-language songs such as "Floating Down" (which was inspired by Jimi Hendrix's desire to make his guitar sound like a helicopter) and "Before the Skies."
With an electric guitarist to her right and a percussionist to her left, Haale switched between guitar and setar (a four-string Persian lute). Or sometimes she just sang, swaying in her black dress and swinging her long curly hair to the electric drones and rumbling drums.
While Haale never let loose with a full-on Sufi-dance twirl, she's anything but shy or reserved. "I believe in bliss," she said. "I believe in pleasure. Can you hear that in some of the songs?"
Sunday, March 04, 2007
I'm not dead. Just working. A lot. Soon come.Posted by CP | Link |
Monday, October 30, 2006
Spank Rock preview (Washington Post Express, Oct. 26, 2006) Spank Rock live review (Washington Post, Oct. 30, 2006) *** Baltimore booty-bass godfather Rod Lee opened for Spanks. I skipped reviewing him because he was DJing, but I plugged his appearaance in the preview, which included this line: "Lee's latest CD, Vol. 5: The Official, acts like a 30-track soundtrack for Bodymore, Murdaland's corner boys." Then I'm watching The Wire last night and what do I hear during the scene where Bubbles finds Sherrod? Rod Lee's "Dance My Pain Away."Posted by CP | Link |
Built to Spill singer-guitarist Doug Martsch makes no attempt to look like a rock star. He's bald on top of his head with a middle-management bowlcut falling over his ears. His scraggily beard makes him look like a mountain man, and his beer belly looks especially doughy under his too-tight T-shirts.
All of that mattered for naught on Monday when Martsch and Co. performed the first of two nights at 9:30 club. The five-piece band played 110 minutes for a loving crowd who could have cared less if Built to Spill's leader looks like he just fell off a tractor.
Martsch's unassuming nature carried over to his performance, which mostly featured him standing in place and shaking his right leg like a fleshy tambourine. His high, nasal, Neil Young-like voice cut through the three-guitar attack, and Built to Spill's Crazy Horse-like jams gave Martsch a chance to show off his solo skills. But songs like "Untrustable/Part 2 (About Someone Else)," where Martsch had to fetch a new guitar as the band vamped, dragged on too long, with the group going for noisy effects over improvisational inspiration. Martsch is a very good pop songwriter, however, with tunes like "The Plan" and "Carry the Zero" having great core melodies and riffs; overextending the songs would have weakened them.
But the longer numbers did give Martsch time to tinker with Built to Spill's DIY stage "design." A too-small screen was suspended high above the band, and Martsch would occasionally stop playing to operate a device that projected psychedelic drawings and YouTube-worthy videos of wacky felines frolicking. It felt like a low-budget, indie-rock version of Spinal Tap's miniature Stonehenge. --Christopher PorterPosted by CP | Link |
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Return of the Wild Bunch Massive Attack makes trip-hop dangerous again
Washington Post Express, Thursday, July 28, 2006; Page E5
[DIRECTOR'S CUT]
When Massive Attack's debut album, Blue Lines, came out in 1991, the mix of hip-hop beats, soundtrack ambiance, and postpunk attitude turned the music world on its ear. It was sui generis statement coming in the middle of the grunge movement, and writers fumbled around to describe the English band's sound. Someone came up with the phrase "trip-hop," and within a few years fellow Bristol artists Tricky and Portishead joined Massive Attack as the faces behind this new sound.
The roots of Massive Attack are in a 1980s sound-system crew called the Wild Bunch, which included Tricky and gained renown for spinning catholic sets. "It wasn't so much dub based; it was a little bit more eclectic," said founding member Robert Del Naja. "It was more hip-hop in its center, but it went dub, it went soul, it went a bit New Wave, it went a bit retro film soundtrack-y—it was always a bit kind of strange, and I guess that's how the reputation spread because we were doing something nobody else was doing at the time."
As things got bigger, the sound system started to splinter, and three members of the Wild Bunch, Del Naja, Grant Marshall and Mushroom, formed Massive Attack. After cutting three well-received singles ("Daydreaming," "Unfinished Sympathy" and "Safe From Harm"), Del Naja said, "We got dragged kicking and screaming into the studio to make our first album. The idea was just to capture the history of our musical upbringing and a commentary on what it was to be a civilian in Britain at that time. We were writing stuff in a hip-hop way but, being youths in Thatcher's Britain, our angles were always slightly different."
After the massive success of Blue Lines, the group went through an identity crisis. "We hit this strange space afterward, where we weren't quite sure what it was about being a band," Del Naja said. "That same sensation has followed every record; we haven't really had a full-on game plan."
That might account for Massive Attack's seemingly lower profile the past few years, but the group, whose core now includes Del Naja, Marshall and producer Neil Davidge, has actually been very busy making records and scoring films. The follow-ups to Blue Lines include the equally great Protection (1995) and Mezzanine (1998) as well as 2003's 100th Window and the soundtrack records Danny the Dog (2004) and Bullet Boy (2005). Massive Attack's latest is Collected, featuring two CDs of hits, remixes and three new songs along with a DVD of the band's evocative videos.
The group is also working on a new concept album that Del Naja describes as "gothic soul," though work has been slow going. "It seems to evade me," he said with a laugh. "It's just really difficult; it's really something I want to do, but it hasn't quite come through. But I'm on a mission." --Christopher PorterPosted by CP | Link |
A lot of visuals during Roger Waters' concert Saturday at Nissan Pavilion would have been perfect accompaniments to an acid trip or a marijuana marathon. Instead, light beer seemed to be the intoxicant of choice among the mostly middle-aged (and beyond) Pink Floyd fans who came to see the 63-year-old Waters run through his former band's hits ("Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)," "Comfortably Numb") and the entirety of the dorm-room favorite Dark Side of the Moon.
The concert brought back the grandiose arena atmospherics of days gone by, and Waters, as usual, did an expert job of pairing evocative images with his music. Grim war scenes and trippy space shots comprised the core of the backdrop, but it was particularly touching to see films and photos of Syd Barrett, the recently deceased leader behind Pink Floyd's first incarnation, during "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun" and "Shine On, You Crazy Diamond."
The set included nothing from Waters' solo albums, though it did feature the horrible new song "Leaving Beirut." A rotten blues-based number that was inspired by Waters hitchhiking through Lebanon in 1961 as well as the recent turmoil there, the artless, didactic lyrics attacked war and President Bush in particular. But as underscored moments earlier by the great anti-war songs "The Fletcher Memorial Home" and "Southampton Dock" (both from the severely underrated Pink Floyd album The Final Cut), this new composition wasn't clever in any way.
It was hard to tell if the crowd was booing "Leaving Beirut"'s lame lyrics or the song's tuneless nature, though their wild cheers during "Sheep" for the slogan-laden inflatable pig ("Impeach Bush Now" was scrawled on its fanny) and for the line "Mother, should I trust the government?" in "Mother" seemed to indicate the audience was generally in sync with Waters' political sentiments. Or maybe it was just the light beer talking. --Christopher Porter -- Correction: There was one song from a Waters solo record: "Perfect Sense" from 1992's Amused to Death.Posted by CP | Link |
Friday, September 22, 2006
Nouvelle Vague: Contagious Fun at La Maison Francaise
"Is there a doctor in the house?" Nouvelle Vague singer Phoebe Killdeer asked. "We're not kidding," confirmed fellow chanteuse Melanie Pain. A cold had worked its way through the band, and the crooners were offering a VIP backstage pass if a medicine man would step forward at the sold-out La Maison Francaise on Wednesday.
Usually, it is hard to tell whether Nouvelle Vague is kidding: The French group interprets new wave and punk songs such as the Buzzcocks' "Ever Fallen in Love," New Order's "Blue Monday" and the Clash's "Guns of Brixton" as Brazilian-steeped lounge numbers. Nouvelle Vague's versions are certainly lovely, but are they necessary?
But after seeing the band in concert, questions of authenticity and necessity became moot: Nouvelle Vague might be making a joke, but it's a great jape -- and, illnesses be damned, it makes for an even better live show, filled with joy and expert showmanship.
While Killdeer's throat may have suffered, her voice didn't. Sounding a bit like Eartha Kitt, Killdeer used dance moves straight out of a "creative movement" class for kids. The equally wide-eyed Pain also shimmied like a child, but her dime-store dress and wispy voice were the perfect contrasts and complements to Killdeer. Together they tackled a Dead Kennedys song about drinking too much to love, leading the audience in a raucous singalong section of the unprintable title's chorus, but generally they traded off tunes, backed by acoustic guitar, bass, percussion, accordion and just a hint of laptop.
While the Dead Kennedys romp was good filthy fun, it was XTC's "Making Plans for Nigel" that perfectly captured Nouvelle Vague's spirit. With Pain and Killdeer crooning back to back, accompanied by a gentle bossa nova beat, the band's accordionist stood behind them and blew soap bubbles. Kitschy? Sure. Fabulous? Absolutely. --Christopher PorterPosted by CP | Link |
Ziggy and Stephen Marley closed their annual Bob Marley Roots Rock Reggae Festival tour at Wolf Trap on Sunday, and while it celebrated their father's life, it also highlighted how unenviable it is to try to compete with their pop's prodigious talents. Stephen and Ziggy are very likable as individual artists, but you can't help but compare them to Robert Nesta Marley -- and in that light, they suffer from the blazing sun that is their dad's legacy.
Perhaps because nobody knows the music from his long-delayed forthcoming CD, "Mind Control," Stephen stuck primarily to his dad's catalogue, including "No Woman, No Cry," "Could You Be Loved" and "Buffalo Soldier." Or perhaps Stephen is just more attuned to the real reason why the crowd turns out for this festival.
Ziggy Marley, left, helped headline the Bob Marley Roots Rock Reggae Festival at Wolf Trap; cellist Ken Slowik was one of the soloists with the Smithsonian Chamber Players at the American Art Museum.
Stephen may sound and look eerily similar to his father -- his stage movements are especially haunting -- but it's Ziggy who's had the greater commercial success as an artist. But the eldest of Bob's sons didn't play any Melody Makers hits, preferring to concentrate on tunes from his mediocre new CD, "Love Is My Religion." Ziggy's recent songs are so-so at best, ignorable at worst, which is something you can't say about the Bob Marley compositions that his son covered, including "No More Trouble," "Forever Loving Jah" and a concert-closing version of "Get Up, Stand Up" featuring Stephen Marley and Bunny Wailer.
In fact it was Bob's old Wailers band mate Bunny who put on the best performance of the festival, which also featured the funk band Ozomatli and the singer- songwriter Jon Nicholson. Decked out in a white military-like suit decorated with silver spangles, the great Bunny looked like the captain of the good ship Rasta as he joyously danced and sang his way through classic Wailers songs such as "Simmer Down" and "I'm the Toughest" as well as "Cool Runnings" and "Rootsman Skanking" from his own rich solo career. --Christopher PorterPosted by CP | Link |
Friday, August 25, 2006
Beirut: Eager (but Not Quite Ready) to Take On the World
As a teenager, Zach Condon dropped out of high school and eventually went to Paris, where he encountered Roma, or Gypsy, music. "When I came back to America, I realized that world music is no joke -- it really has a lot to it," Condon, now 20, told Pitchfork Media.
Condon's group, Beirut, made its D.C. debut at Warehouse Next Door on Wednesday, and the ramshackle concert felt like a talent show performance by an earnest bunch that indeed has just discovered that "world music is no joke." (The name Beirut isn't a jape either, just an awkward coincidence in the face of current events.) Imagine a one-armed Balkan band in training and you'll get a sense of Beirut's loose approximation of Eastern European music, filtered through an indie-rock worldview. Accordion, keyboards, baritone saxophone, ukuleles, violin, cello and percussion all clattered for attention, but it was the drum kit that dominated in the club's crummy acoustics.
But Condon's appealing, Rufus Wainwright-like croon -- a belting, slurring, theatrical wail -- was easily heard over the galloping drums on songs like "Postcards From Italy" and "The Canals of Our City." While his trumpet playing is average, Condon's bright personality and blossoming talent are obvious, and it's easy to understand why his not-quite-ripe music is still appetizing.
Even before the release of Beirut's debut CD, "Gulag Orkestar," the project had been hotly hyped on blogs, and a long line for the concert curled down Seventh Street NW and around New York Avenue well before the doors opened. But at least half the queue was left out in the hot August air, missing the 40-minute show. There's no doubt, though, that Condon and company will be back, at a larger venue. That's no joke. --Christopher PorterPosted by CP | Link |
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Absinthe at the Aniseed Bar in the Hotel Les Strelitzias, Juan-Les-Pins, France, July 19, 2006.
MP3s are here to promote love. They are removed after one week. PC: Right click the song title and choose "save target as" to download. Mac: Click and hold song title and then choose save.
n Ellis (resplendent in a full suit and hat) and Leroy Sibbles (from the Heptones) and venerable dancehall stars Admiral Bailey and Professor Nuts simply did what they do, with good humor and grace, considering the obstacles they had to overcome.
Posted by CP | 
