Soul Money Blood Votes (Afro-Punk Festival, Fort Greene Park, 7/12/08)

I'd like to see this woman become a huge fucking star.

Interesting scheduling conflict that Saturday in July.

Over at The Yard (which on nice days, and for some things, can be the best venue in this town) Todd P was hosting his all-day Mid Summer Outdoor Party.  TP4KTB has made a shift over the past year towards the types of acts Todd books/nurtures; at least four bands on the bill had recently been slapped with a BNM (High Places, Titus Andronicus, Crystal Antlers, Ponytail) and another (Abe Vigoda) got a "Recommended."  (And more, maybe?  Has Pitchfork gotten to Vivian Girls, yet?  That one seems an inevitable 8.Something, not necessarily due to quality, just because that's how things seem to work.)  Anyway, good for those bands, good for Todd P (and seriously, do not underestimate the value of repeatedly booking the same bands, from the time they're shit until the time they're capable, into the same makeshift spaces for the same all-ages crowds, instead of accelerating everything into biggest room/top dollar, run-on sentence, whatever).  Good for music?  Could be, maybe, who knows.

Anyway, The Yard.  Probably something like a $10 door, duct-taped amps, questionable brewskis, sweaty fun.  Low-key kids-putting-on-a-show atmosphere.

And a few blocks away in Fort Greene Park, the penultimate day of the free annual Afro-Punk Festival was held on an elevated stage at one end of a dusty ball field amidst spotted corporate sponsors' displays.  The right speakers would intermittently cut out and two of the six announced acts never showed (including headliners The Noisettes, who had visa problems), but I got to see what I came for and came away impressed by that.

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It's been too long since I've seen James Spooner's documentary Afro-Punk (trailer) to recall why I thought it a shoddy flick, but there were two things I remember liking.  It's always good to give voice to offbeat subcultures, and in this case it was good to hear from (gasp) black people who like the rock music.

Hopefully it's not as sub a culture as presented.  Not just because people of color have had a heavy hand in both the creation of and many developments to the form.  Because c'mon, it's rock and roll, it's there to be enjoyed.  But both a prolonged history of imposed genre segregation and a demand for a music that asserts African-American identity have reinforced notions that R&B and Hip-Hop are "black" and the co-opted hybrid Rock is "white."  Black rock artists either seem like token exceptions - quick, name-check TV on the Radio - or get forced back into their pre-approved listening stations.  (Santi White recently complained about this, though releasing the M.I.A.-ish "Creator" as the first taste of her New Wavey album might have aided and abetted those notions.)  Do black rock fans stand out more now because the pervasive play of white rock music has waned, as their patronage represents an active choice among today's splintered listening options?  Is it an assertion of identity that should invite, as it did recently, an attempt to brand?  (And "blipster" was a mildly ironic turnabout, what with the original white "hepcat/hipster" identity rooted in listening to black ‘bop.)

(Has anyone ever coined a term for black country music fans?)

Afro-Punk, as the name implies, hews toward African-Americans involved in punk and hardcore.  An interesting choice as it's a scene both traditionally a draw for self-described "freaks" and one that's, from the start, been accused of racism (quick, name-check Bad Brains and Living Colour).  Not that musically interesting, perhaps, depending on how strictly performers define the genre; perhaps that's why I remember the flick as being more talk less rock.

The best development concerning the doc - perhaps the best thing that can happen to any film - is that it has found life off-screen.  Its site suggests that it has become the cornerstone of a "movement" (and that the site itself is home to a community), but more importantly director Spooner and partner Matthew Morgan waved its banner to organize shows.  This fourth year of the Afro-Punk Festival encompassed a week's worth of free concerts and screenings and featured a variety of acts.  The Saturday show was "punk" in the way you can affix the word to anything; there was nothing that resembled hardcore, which was more than okay with me.  (There might have been some of that during the week in the lot across from BAM, which hosted a bmx/skate ramp (begging the question is there such a thing as Afro-Mallpunk?).  I had swung by after St. Vincent, but they'd already wrapped for the night.  And hey, look, Janelle Monáe.  Snoozed, lost.)

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The other thing I liked about Afro-Punk, the movie, was Tamar-kali.  Scrawled down her name, raced off to her myspace.  She was New York-based, what was streaming sounded good, but there were no upcoming performances listed.  Got lost in the ongoing torrent of crap new releases until this festival's announcement.

Tamar-kali has:  A great look, ferocious but not threatening, piercings and teeth, hair braided and pulled to one side (when Afro-Punk was filmed, her head was mostly shaved), a body that's fit without being tiny-waisted.  A voice that can get BIG, which we need more of in loud music; the screaming shortcut on which too many singers rely is supposedly an acceptable way to articulate anguish, but it's an inarticulate cliché, a reliance of the reedy-throated who can't bother to get better.  A sound more ambitious and accessible - slower and lusher, sometimes - than her hardcore background.  A live presence that can be centered and commanding.  A showboat of a guitarist in Jerome Jordan, who threw his leg over the neck of his guitar before doing the Chuck Berry hop across the stage.

Oh, and she has tunes.

Tamar-kali - Your Girl (mp3) (buy)

Yeah, I'm wary of anything that tries hard to riff ominously, and that cymbal work is so sloppy that the first half-minute of the track points toward "Stonehenge."  At its sparest, "Your Girl" lacks the sort of crispness that would demand attention; just after the three-minute mark, when everything clears out for the guitar to settle into a heavy chug, the kick-drum whump-whump is stiff enough to sound like a warm-up take.  But when the guitar and vocals pile it on you'll want to get lost in their layers.  Adds up.  I love how, just when you're getting used to how the vocals are filling everything out and making it soar, she jabs underneath with the Janis-nodding "Take a little bitty, take a little bitty..."

Reminds me of this bit of awesome.

Skunk Anansie - Selling Jesus (mp3) (buy)

Not the constipated attack Skin - Skunk Anansie lead singer Deborah Dyer calls herself Skin - takes during the verses, but way the "Love love love" just opens up and shoots skyward.  (SA were a 90's UK hard rock band; this song was included on the soundtrack for Kathryn Bigelow's great Strange Days.  Skin has apparently continued her career in a softer vein.)

Here's something else Tamar-kali has:  Three separate musical projects which have produced, as far as I can tell, a total of four songs on a single EP from three years ago.  I'm sure she had more numbers in her set here, and her myspace promises a new album called Black Bottom "in the summer of 2008."  But there are no new songs streaming there, no updated album info, no new tour dates.  I don't know if it requires a leg up or a kick in the ass or if this is The Plan (and I'm blogging July in September, so I'm not in a position to talk shit).  But it feels like something has stalled, here.

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Imani Coppola - Woke Up White (mp3) (buy)

Imani Coppola - I Love Your Hair (mp3) (buy)

I recall reading (or reading about, or maybe I'm making this up) an interview with a programming director for a modern rock radio station where he explained that the young male demo his advertisers sought were not interested in hearing female rock singers.  As if they're terrified to find themselves singing along to words they don't think'll fit in their mouths.  There are rule-proving exceptions.  (Evanescence, for whatever weird reason.  Paramore, perhaps, now?)  But it seems lifetimes ago that a track called "Doll Parts" could be one of several femme-sung songs in heavy rotation.  Music listening has become such a selfish act.

Those songs up there are from Imani Coppola (myspace), who scored a video hit back in those ‘90s with "Legend of a Cowgirl."  "White" and "Hair" came a decade after that Odelay-leaning debut, on an Ipecac release called The Black & White Album.  If the little white boys Mr. Radio Guy waxed about are too insecure to listen to the girls sing, are they willing to submit to a mixed-race female fiddler?  And while radio might not be as mass a medium as it once was, the problem of translating ideas to an audience is one every artist negotiates.  How to navigate that area where expression and contemplation of identity might lead to self-righteous navel-gazing, how to get at something universal without creating something bland and anonymous.  Those aren't black/white male/female issues.  Raising issues of race and gender might better the chance you're singing about something... though you risk listeners will confuse of topic with target demo.  "Oh, this is not meant for me."  A brand like "Afro-Punk" might galvanize a certain constituency while seeming to exclude others.  (Though this free concert had no problem attracting all sorts.)

At her best, Coppola works to avoid boxes.  Black & White can be a real interesting listen.  Collectively, the record - her eighth - feels like a dabbling session that's missing some sort of summary revelation.  There are good ideas, though some tracks settle for one or two of them when they should pile them on.  But she's immensely likeable, connects through smarts and laughs ("I know black folks real well 'cause I watch me some Dave Chappelle!") and some rock-solid pop tunes.

Coppola was present as part of her Little Jackie (myspace) project, which can feel like a conscious attempt to go after a piece of the Winehouse pie ("Cryin' for the Queen" seems to go after Winehouse, herself).  The Stoop, released the week of this show, is fully infused with Coppola's personality, wordy and droll.  She's more concerned with getting a job than getting high, and more at ease blathering over sunny laid-back tracks ("28 Butts" (skip to the four minute mark), "The Stoop") than the sassier stuff.  Her partner Adam Pallin has programmed the record thick with old soul samples (none of which are credited in the CD booklet, unfortunately), but the density of the delivery ensures it's contemporary.  Hip-hop delivery laid over doo-wop, some of her wink-nudge old-new stuff wouldn't seem that strange coming from Nellie McKay.

And while her energy level was barely north of Daria on that afternoon, she's unafraid to sink her teeth into something.

You cannot harm your cause with a Shangri-Las cover.  (From another show, obvs.) 

Little Jackie - LOL (mp3) (buy)

This 21st-C crossed-wire tale - an impressively complicated narrative well-told - has a sexy bari sax bump and great bounce, and it's silly to find complaints about fun, concise, accessible pop like this.  The Stoop is a very commercial record (single "The World Should Revolve Around Me" is apparently serving as the theme song for some show on VH-1), and every track is worth more than one shuffled spin.  Its only problem is consistency; after hearing Coppola's Black & White effort, I started wanted this box shaken up a bit.

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Absolutely unrelated, but it's Friday and wet and grey and this little Relationship 2.0 ditty still charms my cockles.

The Hot Toddies - HTML (mp3) (buy)

(I'm waiting for a post-Internet love song called "The Spy Who Came in From the Code.")

(Sorry.)

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As should be evident by now, this day of Afro-Punk played loose with its "-Punk."  Also with its "Afro-."  I don't think there was a single all-black band on the bill.  But are you going to argue against the inclusion of Mick Collins' Dirtbombs (myspace)?  One-fifth African-American, The Dirtbombs were The Dirtbombs were The Dirtbombs.  And let's hope they shall always be.  Soul-informed garage rock, simple and sludgy.

Drummer Ben Blackwell climaxed their day-ending set by rebuilding his kit in front of the stage; Collins hopped down in the crowd to join him.  Long live, etc. 

This fall they'll be touring with TV on the Radio.

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The MC introduced the day's first act, Sophia Ramos (myspace) as a shot of estrogen in music that's too often testosterone-fueled.  Which is great, but not notable on a day when three-quarters of the line-up featured frontwomen (and The Dirtbombs wouldn't be The Dirtbombs without Ko Melina).

Maybe he was referring to how Ramos climaxes her set by soaking her shirt and whipping her Yo Majesties out.  Which - after decently-sung just-okay blues-rock and banter about how her mom wanted her to give up her rock star dream and an unnecessary Rosie Perez impersonation -just sorta compounded the sadness.

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Also there:

Bold as Love, Gotryke, Like a bird on the wire, The Passage Project, Sonic Parthenon, UltravioletUnderground.

More pics.

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"Who is this lady who sings like a heavy angel?"

TO DO THIS WEEKEND:  Pitchfork.tv is streaming a doc on The Gits through Monday.  Spend 82 minutes there for the story and concert footage, then spend forever with the band's necessary album.  They deserve to be remembered for more than the horrible way things ended.

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(...or the horrible meta intrusion in the doc's last chapter:  The filmmakers include a local news report that mentions the very documentary you're watching and how it will now have "a different ending.")

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 TO DO THIS SATURDAY (in Brooklyn):  Todd P has shows with Thee Oh Sees (for free) and Marnie Stern & Screaming Females (only seven fucking dollars)

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Wait:  "Show(s)?"  Plural?!

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"Foreigner is a classic rock band."  Do note that the interview, conducted "in the back of a VW camper," has been brought to you courtesy of Right Guard.

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New Amadou & Mariam, produced by that Blur dude.

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Happy birthday, Benn loxo.

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ProductshopNYC beats me out the door.

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"People have the idea that film is somehow permanent, as opposed to the evanescence of a theatrical event. It's closer to the truth to say that movies just linger a bit longer before they, too,  begin to fade away."

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Bill Condon, whose Kinsey should be considered a textbook biopic, is writing and directing a film about the life of Richard Pryor.

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"At 5:14 p.m. ET on Sept. 21, on their 28th offensive possession of the season, the St. Louis Rams invaded the red zone of an opponent for the first time this season."  They are hopeless.  I don't like watching college football, but it feels like I already am, so:  What player are we going for in next year's draft?  And that's not even a hope, because you can't draft a leader into a team full of fair-weather veterans.  Anyone hungry in Missouri?  Anyone at all?  Trent, you ready to earn that ring you got from the bench in 2000?

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"I don't think a celebrity should waste the time of such a busy and important person as Bono."

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Foreign Policy Experience.

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LOLDepression.

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Cut and run. (via)

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"How are we - how is anyone - supposed to get the bugs out of a show?"

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Best crowd surf ever.  (via)

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"I'm the greatest guitar player alive."

tags: little jackie  imani coppola  tamarkali  the dirtbombs  sophia ramos  afropunk  concert reviews  

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