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Back To The Garden
by Cripsy Duck 2-22-01
(printed in C-VILLE Vol.13, No. 9)
YELLOWMAN - AGENTS OF GOOD ROOTS
CANNONBALL COMIN' - NRBQ - RICHIE HAVENS
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2/14/01 He may be yellow, but he ain't chicken. Never was. King Yellowman, the albanic godfather of Jamaican dancehall reggae, remains an effervescent, irreverent party-M.C., seeding his audience with kernels of social consciousness (stuff like: "wear a rubber") while he and his five-piece band rip up the island dance grooves with the power and punch of a shiny reggae locomotive. In the early 1980's, Yellowman's raspy wail was among the first to rap over upbeat reggae, helping resuscitate the genre at a time when its vibrance was threatened by the early demise of its undisputed prince, Bob Marley. With electronic drums, truncated rhythms, sexualy explicit lyrics, and a renewed devotion to the spirit of reggae itself, King Yellowman showed a whole new generation that this spiritual pop folk-art from the West Indies was capable of more than just inspiring stoned people. Many stoned people were, of course, quite offended by his "rudeness," which only further propelled him into the limelight. (Remind you of anyone?) These days he's traveling with a solid rootsy quintet, and they threw down a full mix of kicking originals and unusual covers, as is the fashion among reggae and bluegrass bands-- both genres loving to prove that everybody's music sounds as good in their style as in the original. They settled in with a cover of "Sea Cruise," before declaring "Nobody move, nobody get hurt," and then proceeded to rock down the room for the better part of the evening.
2/15/01 I broke the seal on my self-banishment from Trax by stopping by the Agents of Good Roots show. Some three-piece acoustic guitar fronted Dave Matthews-influenced crew was onstage when I arrived. Their name? Some name or something. I don't know. They must need a better name, because they were pretty good (but so Dave-ish-- wierd) but I don't remember their name. Some name.
The Agents broke out with an extended jazz flourish in what I assume was an effort to display their new prize-- former Gibb Droll bassist Kevin Hamilton. The crowd liked it. Hamilton is more "fusion-y" and perhaps a slightly better technical bassist than Stewart Meyers, their recently departed vintage-toned original bassist, but it might take a season or two for the band to grow accustomed to the loss of a founding member. Meyers' high harmony vocals were glaringly absent on the choruses of "John Brown," and I'm sure fans will miss his original songs, but the Agents will, no doubt, continue to throw down their intelligent derivation of rock possibilities. Up at Michael's Bistro, a whole other ball game was going on. A UVa. quartet called Cannonball Comin' was rocking a house full of young hipster Wahoos. And I mean rockin'. Girls were dancing on tables and going nuts while these guys scampered through classic rock covers of stuff like "Magic Carpet Ride" and "Badge." They were pretty fun-- if not just because so few people try to be this kind of rock band anymore-- but not good enough to warrant this kind of revelry. Still, the crowd freaked out. Fully. Freaky.
2/17/01 NRBQ, the original progenitors of the "don't give a shit-- is this really a performance?" brand of vaudvillian rock excess, were found Saturday night shredding up some old school partiers at the Outback Lodge. The goofball rock quartet talks more trash than an underpaid hairdresser, slops it up really good an dthen actually rocks out over the din of their own silliness. With an endless litany of lost '60's pop #1 singles, broken up by their own screwball anthems, NRBQ prove like no other band alive that slop can reign supreme and silliness can be a divine mode of being.
2/19/01 If you took the entire psychedelic '60's flower power, summer-of-love movement and distilled it to absolute purity, you would end up with something like Richie Havens. Havens, the man blew minds at the original Woodstock with cries of "Freedom" and his brilliant rendition of "Here Comes The Sun," is still on the scene, and if there was ever a true Aquarian guru amongst us-- that's the man.
I swear I saw his aura glowing around him as he told nutty anecdotes about guys who'd play the same note for hours until someone complained ("but you know how many cats are looking for this one note?"), or the kid who begged Havens to teach him "All Along the Watchtower" and then went on to record "the definitive version." Of course, Richie's no name-dropper, so you have to infer that he means... Jimi Hendrix. Gulp! Oh yeah, Richie Havens has been there, done that, got the t-shirt, and never broke a sweat, frowned or otherwise let it get to him in any way other than-- "we can fix this thing, people!" He sounds as fresh as he did on Yasgur's farm 30-odd years ago, looks a fair bit younger and still speaks and plays with the power and presence of a humanly enlightened being. A true inspiration. Big kudos also to Dana Kurtz who opened the show with a soulful batch of originals with enough refreshing grit to re-affirm my faith in singer-songwriters despite the depressing morass of squeaky-clean acoustic or rustic-in-a-country- kind-of-way performers who clot the circuit. Peace. |
