Uno Amor Something Something Something (Erykah Badu, Wingate Field, 8/5/08)

Monday night at a baseball high school football field in Brooklyn, Erykah Badu tried to pull several thousand people into her brain.  Some climbed in her head willingly; some walked away shaking their own.

Wait.

Erykah Badu - The Healer (mp3) (buy)

Badu released a weird, indulgent, amazing record in February that will wind up near, if not at, the top of critics' lists come the end of 2008.  If people aren't talking about New Amerykah Part One: 4th World War as often as they're buzzing over mayfly indie bands, it's because the work is hard to talk about.  Like you need qualifications - doctorates and merit badges and an acquired level of chemical assistance/resistance - to do so.  Everything everyone is saying is right, and everything everyone is saying is not enough.

Not to scare anyone away.  This isn't difficult listening!  (My first reaction was Stevie Wonder's best period + early hip hop.)  It just requires listening.  It's substantial stuff, deeply political and personal, mood-driven, stream-of-consciousness-shaped.  It's the work of a unique (how often can you use that word?  seriously?) artist, but so situated in something larger that you feel you should know the entirety of the world to allow it its proper context.  Okay, not as expansive as all that, nothing needs that much hype, but Amerykah's power comes from its ability to imply connections to things outside itself - musically, politically, spiritually, people-ly - without losing any of its identity.

Bah, me and my hopeless vagueness.  Easier to say Get the Record! (it's less than $10 at Amazon) and let you mull it over yourself.  Let me know if you come up with a good word for the magic in that track up there.

Last night's live show was... well, it was odd, often in good ways.  If it wasn't the had-to-be-there show Sasha Frere-Jones described back in May, it ranked at least a should-have-been.  About a half-hour in, the Fort Greene resident bade Brooklyn "Good night."  Ninety minutes later, it seemed like she'd never leave.  Badu might be unstuck in time, or something.  Somehow the band (Which seemed sizable, from where I was sitting. There's a flautist.  Who sometimes switches to panpipes.) follows.  She breaks beats, constantly, with "Wait."  And it should be frustrating, at best playful, but instead it focuses, centers.  Badu has so much presence and power when she simply. stands. still.  Wait.  Watching her is sort of like watching one of those older, crazier Cat Power shows - but one where most of the spaghetti sticks, one where the spaghetti has a philosophy, one worth watching.

Philosophical spaghetti, sure, yes.

Just as New Amerykah flows on its own terms, Badu starts and stops and restarts songs wherever she thinks they belong.  Wait.  She sticks with "The Healer" even she forgets the lyrics, replacing them with "Shit/Oh shit."  Et cetera.  She reprises the song later in the show, not to cover lost ground, and not to close a circle, but because a little of that belonged back there, and now more of it belongs here, too.

Some things didn't work.  Several things, actually.  She stopped the show early on, tucked a drum under her arm and went off on a horrible, horrible solo.  And she spent a lot of time alone at an electronic drum pad, amusing mostly herself.  "What the hell is she doing?" someone asked near me.  "Whatever the hell she feels like" someone answered.  The crowd where I was got restless, Badu seemed testy.  Right after she seemed to threaten to shut the whole thing down, she hissed:  "I see what this is, Brooklyn.  I see what y'all are trying to pull.   Y'all came to have church.  Let's have church."

But she warmed up and connected as the show went on.  Standing there in a shiny sternum-baring jumpsuit, smiling out from under piles of (what I assume to be) someone else's hair, she speechified a bit, talking about the film that inspired the name of her new record, getting political in an initially flakey, ultimately knowing way.  (She thanked Obama for what he has already accomplished, but concluded that "We don't need a new president, we need a whole new system.")  She railed against an economy based on "fear and consumption," then introduced her new single ("Soldier").  When she did so, she first asked permission, then joked about demanding love.  "Keep in mind I'm an artist and I'm sensitive about my shit."  She was going to do whatever the hell she felt like, anyway.

When she made full contact kids in the street outside the fence put their hands up, there were fireworks, victory laps.  A staccato riff on the glock-cock-lockness from Worldwide Underground's "Danger" left bruises.  A climactic walk through the audience during "Bag Lady" - during which she joked/praised the enthusiastic, tone-free folks in the up-front friends-of section who got to "Ooooooo" into her mic as fearless - suggested she was hitting her stride two hours in.  Unfortunately, by then, the crowd back by me had thinned out.

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The crowd booed a pre-show invocation when it denounced marijuana.  It was okay with most of the other stuff it was for/against.

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Also there:  Daily Session (comments), DenseMedia Domain, Dip Dip Dive (ex-Status Ain't Hood), Dominic: The War Journal, Hello, Babar (for Vibe), Me & My Misadventures, move, My Cure for Insomnia, Ngala- Najla, The Next in Line, now_thendischord, Screaming Silence, The Sinner's Blog, You Damn Right

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The sin of these Marty Markowitz-produced concert series is that they treat ordinary people as second-class citizens.  Oh, they are free shows - like the ones at Central Park, Prospect Park, McCarren Park Pool, the River-to-River shows, the list now goes on and on.  But unlike any of those, regular people have no chance to get anywhere near the stage.  Huge seated areas are cordoned and copped off for very-importants and press; the VIP area at Wingate Field seems the size of three Bowery Ballrooms (though because of the seats, doesn't fit 1600 people).  Like all such sections, I'm sure that actual fans manage their way in, fans-with-connections, maybe sponsors have giveaways.  Markowitz, pre-show, enjoyed recognizing certain people in the section, fellow civil servants.  He also mentioned an armed forces unit three separate times, finally dedicating the show to them.  I'm sure there are some people who deserve to be in there, some people who need to be in there.  And I'm aware that free shows don't pay for themselves, and surely seats are offered as compensation (there was a giant Applebee's tent right off to the side of the stage in addition to the VIP section).  But the fenced-in area with its little white seats stands as the city's biggest Douchebag Pit, a testament to casual privilege when contrasted with the thousands of real fans who waited for hours in lines that stretched around the park.  These are free shows, but freer for some than others.

"You're always guaranteed a seat if you bring your own!" he announced helpfully as people with lawn chairs and blankets set up way, way, back from the stage.  First come, first serve?  First come, fuck you!

Markowitz, my borough's president, has hosted his concert series in Coney Island for thirty years; this series in Wingate Field has been going for twenty-six.  Bless the man for the intent, if not the execution.  I don't know much about him.  When introducing the events I've attended, he has spoken with an effusive love for his borough and its people; I'm sure some of that's genuine, some of it's probably politicking, I don't know.  And I don't mean any criticism to come from a place of ingratitude.  They're free!  But it's doubly unfortunate that his two series are the highest-profile free offerings off the hipster-trodden paths (plenty of white folks did make it to the Badu concert, which wasn't even mentioned in the Village Voice's print edition).

The Coney Island shows in Asser Levy/Seaside Park alternate long-established mainstream artists with campy wash-ups - this week it's Liza, the series ends with Huey Lewis and the News.  I saw Al Green there a couple years ago.  Behind the large VIP section, additional $5 or $10 seats were set up for paying customers - redefining the whole "free concert" experience.  The majority of these stayed empty as freeloaders spilled out into the surrounding streets, craning their necks to catch what they could from giant video screens. Before that concert, Markowitz mentioned a desire - soon to be realized -to build an amphitheater on the spot that would compete with Long Island's Jones Beach and Jersey's PNC Arts Center for outdoor summer shows.  Which is great, though I wonder if this Seaside series will become even less free than it has been.

Just south of Crown Heights, the Wingate shows - dubbed the Martin Luther King Jr. Concert Series - feature mostly black artists.  The only other show I've attended there was a couple years ago, The Mighty Sparrow (back, this year, on August 18th); it's the last time I was called "white boy" mock-threateningly.  Wish that would happen more often!  The atmosphere for that show was inhospitable.  I was bag-checked and frisked three times; the whole surrounding area was barricaded off like a war zone; when leaving the park before the end of the show, I was forced to walk several blocks out of the way.  A woman leaving at the same time as I, then, yelled at a cop, "You wouldn't be treating people like this if it was Park Slope!"  Last night, despite lines wrapped around the park, the approach and exit were far more friendly.

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I'm not usually one for music blogs that're all-tunes-no-talk, but this site popped up on yon Hype Machine the other day; it's packed with some very good, sometimes very odd, stuff.  If you want a feel, just stream through the playlist.  Anyone who puts Rahsaan Roland Kirk up against your ears is worth listening to.

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Benn loxo is in Beijing through mid-September, having the shit hosting out of him.

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I do not give a shit about Brett Favre or overweight kitties and I want that ON RECORD.

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This DVD set strikes me as necessary.

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"We'll back up Amy Winehouse."  (via Idolator)  My regrets over missing Sunday's King Khan/Deerhunter/Black Lips show at McCarren Park Pool were wiped away by (1) Habib Koité's amazing set in Prospect Park and (2) that video clip.  Let's face it:  The only difference between bad basic cable and your blog entries and Flickr'd snaps, now, is audience size.  Everything's one giant promotional schlong.  And I don't - you can't! - resent bands seeking to broaden their audience.  But making MTV part of your weekly shindig reveals the whole Pool Party thing (soon-to-be nationalized!) less a cool community place-to-go/thing-to-do than an elaborate 1.0 community-branding enterprise. I guess that should have been obvious from the start!  God, I'm a moron.

The longer I live, the more I realize that every moment spent under a rock is Quality Time.

tags: erykah badu  concert reviews  

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