I'm Not Above Throwing Down a Few Helen Keller Jokes, People (Amadou & Mariam, Webster Hall, 6-08-09)

Mariam was staring at me all night long.  She so digs me.  Or I had mustard on my shirt.  When special guest Governor David Patterson wandered through, she didn't even look up.

I'm not just being pathetic, insensitive and unfunny because that's the sort of person I am.  This one made me cynical by breaking out of the gate lame.  Amadou & Mariam (myspace) make these beautifully arranged pop songs that you know are going to lose a little something in a live setting - unless they drag along a multi-instrumentalist who can drop a bass clarinet and pick up a kora all while playing two different kinds of violins, etc. - but you assume the energy and live sound will more than compensate by filling things out and pushing things forward.

Eventually they did, by the end everything was fucking crackerjack, it's no wonder people leave their shows glowing.

The start was rough, though, the sound was feeble, some choices were lousy.  Handlers led the leads - a blind husband and wife from Mali, they both sing and he plays guitar - to the front of the stage; they looked resplendent in a silvery lavender and lime, and there was no reason to expect that they would do anything but just stand there and play their parts.  But the show didn't go anywhere, either.  They opened with the title track to their latest, Welcome to Mali; it's probably the worst song on a fine record, it plods.  Songs kept exhausting themselves quickly and I started to hate being there.  Full of rue.  I started to resent having been made to feel all wet blankety when I missed these guys in Central Park a couple years ago, I was regretting the decision to observe the $30 ticket instead of bailing and watching David Byrne's Broadway show on a jumbotron.

I haven't seen Byrne since his Rei Momo tour, which was a lot of fun, this was not.

Whoever decided to hire an arena rock drummer for this outfit should be dragged off and strangled and shot.  I hope the gorgeous back-up singer on the right gets a restraining order against the creepy open-shirted bass player.  I'm not sure that, under less reverent circumstances, audiences would put up with some of Amadou's guitar solos, or be pleased that he has exactly one go-to "I'm feeling it!" move, which is to crouch toward the stage while bending to his left (creepy bass player always meets him down there, worshipping from the floor).  And when they got to the sure-fire "Sabali"...

Amadou & Mariam - Sabali (mp3)(buy)

...they had a guest come out and rap over it.  (Not K'Naan, who appears elsewhere on Welcome.  Apparently it was Theophilus London, performing his "Grey X Sage" remix.)  Which wasn't a bad idea!  But he sang-rapped in an out-of-tune squawk, had this awful presence that buried the song and danced on its grave.

("Sabali," by the way, is a bait/switch single.  There's nothing else on the record that sounds like it.  The rest is good enough, though, and varied enough, that you will not feel tricked.)

Everything seemed to be going badly and I amused myself by getting mean.  The band worked too hard at getting people to clap.  Hey, guys, how many middle fingers am I holding up?  Every time either A or M were led off stage, I wondered if we'd ever hear from them again, perhaps we were bearing witness to a kidnapping.  Mariam returned once after a costume change, decked out in gold sequins (as shown in foil on the slipcover to the CD, the couple wears gold-rimmed glasses and Amadou plays a gold guitar) and I was distracted by the mechanics and questionable necessity of the outfit swap.

But something else changed, there, and shit came together.  Amadou is an impressive guitarist - he spent time with Les Ambassadeurs in the 70s - who loves his effects pedal; the choice to shred at the end of the quiet "I Follow You" was odd, ballsy, winning.  His one-handed solo - ugh - was performed while his other arm was around his wife - awwwwww.  Everything the synthesizer player did all night was A++.  Whenever their percussionist trotted his djembe to the front and acted as hype man there wasn't just more energy, the assertion of his counter-rhythms made things more exciting.  He led a great dance-off between the two back-up singers.  (The rapper re-emerged with a talking drum, and he was bad at that, too, but by then goodwill had been restored and I tolerated him.)  And at some point I realized I was having too much fun to be mean anymore.

The crowd was surprising.  Unlike the Femi Kuti concert, which had more of a 50/50 white/non mix, this house was at least 90% white.  And for an act that's been together for more than a couple decades, really young.  Maybe that's the difference between a Nigerian act and a Malian one - good portions of the crowd, judging by the reactions to between-song banter, were French or spoke French or were willing to pretend they did.  Maybe that's the result of marketing, as the duo's last two albums have gotten a heavy promo push and a lot of indie-crowd exposure.   (I didn't start listening until then, either.)  Maybe it's the difference between Afrobeat and pop.

In the end all that matters is that they danced.  There are tons of reasons to hate Webster Hall - and right after I'm done here I'm going to call up the Health Department and report them for refusing to sell tap water at the bar - but it was good to feel the venue's moonwalk floor bounce along on this night.

Also there:  Little to Contribute, WhyDon'tHipstersDance

*

Opener Piers Faccini (myspace) was pleasant, dull.

*

There's this weird rumor going around that the latest Kelly Clarkson CD is not just listenable, but good.

It is neither of those things.

Critical goodwill is cute and everything, but every time I think "I should give this another chance" I put the CD in and it starts telling me, "No, no you shouldn't.  I belong on eBay."

*

Didn't mean to have three African acts in a row on here, it's just how the schedule worked out.  Any consistency is purely accidental.  For instance:  Oumou Sangare's first album in five years came out yesterday, and I'm sorry to say I haven't spent enough time with it to talk about it.  Maybe come July when she comes to Summerstage.

tags: amadou and mariam  concert reviews  

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