Volume 4, Issue 14
July 11 - July 24, 2002
By Judy B.
Maktub Photo Courtesy HoopLA PR
Today, saying "funk" could mean anything from neo-soul to jazz improv to hip-hop.
Go-Go contacted three of the national acts set to perform for the annual AT&T LoDo Music Festival Friday, July 12 and Saturday, July 13. We picked the brains of those that find the funk, gear up the grooves, and break the barriers of labels, genres, and styles. The trendsetters. The innovators. With three stages and over twenty bands, the two days in LoDo promise to be sizzlin' from the musical heat.
Making the Voice
Maktub (mock-tube) is coming in from Seattle, its hometown. Lead singer Reggie Watts commands a pop soul voice that was once called "Chris Cornell meets Al Green." In the early 1990s when Seattle's scene erupted with the success of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and the like, "the groove movement" as Watts referred to it, bubbled underneath the plaid-clad streets. Watts arrived in Seattle and absorbed both the organic and gritty rock sound of the region along with the soul-and-groove outlets and electronic underground bands.
"I feel proud to be connected to a city with a singer like Chris Cornell," Watts said. "He has one of the most amazing voices in rock, ever. That passion, the range, and his songwriting--I just enjoy his sensibility and aesthetic. I sang in straight-up rock bands for a while, until I joined a
Watts told the story of how he surprised people with his lack of funk and soul knowledge early on. "I think most people, since I'm black, kind of assumed I had been listening to Sly and the Family Stone, Marvin Gaye and all of that. But I was just a pop kid growing up. I definitely liked the New Wave and Industrial stuff as a teenager. With the soul groove, I was in the dark for awhile."
Maktub may well represent the epitome of neo-soul, a credible example of the new generation influenced by P-Funk and Snoop Dogg, techno and trance, Zeppelin and Screaming Trees. On the band's latest record Kronos , it is Watts's powerful and magnetic voice coupled with a tight rhythm section and Hammond B3 that shocks audiences with its purity. When Watts declares, "I want some restitution" at the opening of "So Tired," you know he means it, and you want it, too. Kronos hints at Maktub's ambient tastes on "See Clearly," lyrical sensuality on "Baby Can't Wait," love of rock music on "Give Me Some Time" and psychedelic grooves on Led Zeppelin's "No Quarter." Maktub performs Saturday, July 13 at 5:45 pm.
Liquid Improv
Neal Evans plays organ and keyboards for Soulive, a band signed to Blue Note Records, but feels wary of jumping deep into the jazz sea. "Sometimes I find our record in the hip-hop section of some music store, and that makes me happy," Evans said.
Soulive is a four-piece powerhouse of straight ripping, mind-altering musical risk taking. LoDo will witness the fulfillment of a fine-tuned musical philosophy, tested and adjusted to meet the imagination and creativity of all four performers. "There are no leaders in Soulive," Evans said. "We know we want to keep it tight. There is a common goal when we 're playing. It's not an individualistic path of branching off. We start together and stop together, we're listening and going together. It's liquid improv. It's the music that is really speaking."
Evans knows that the history in his own musical experiences will show up suddenly on stage and take the song into a surprising direction. "I think hip-hop has been the greatest influence," Evans said. "I grew up listening to it. My family always had jazz and funk and salsa on. Hip-hop was like a breath of fresh air, just genius. The way you could render sound--Jazz standards suddenly sounded 100 years old. It made a mark on my childhood, just like my dad's records did."
Soulive is not interested in being pigeonholed into one style. The new album, Next , offers a collaboration with heavies such as Black Thought (The Roots), Dave Matthews and guest vocalist Amil Larrieux. The band's rich sound remains. It swings and pops. It makes your butt move. Next is rightly called "modern" in an age searching for a meaningful definition. Soulive reaches for the limits and surpasses them. "I'm quite confident we're going to have a good time," Evans laughed. "We are just trying to convey to people that same bliss we get from hearing music, that transformative state of mind-altering bliss." Soulive performs Saturday, July 13 at 6:15 pm.
The Galaxy Beat
"It's only natural that our music starts with the rhythm, the beat. Just as houses start at a foundation, we start with the bass and drums." Rob Mercurio, bassist for the New Orleans-based Galactic , loves talking about this elusive, vague, slippery animal called the "New Orleans groove." "There is no way to truly describe it with words," Mercurio said. "It's gotta be heard, felt, tasted. There is no place on earth like New Orleans."
According to Mercurio, the thing about N.O. music is the syncopation: the odd accents on the off beats, the shifty sway of the downbeat, the slight sass in the ass, so to speak. "It's all in the way the drum beats line up. It's locked in the pocket, for sure, and it just hooks you in. The second you step onto the dance floor in New Orleans, you hear it. It gets you."
Mercurio and drum phenom Stanton Moore take on the duties of locking in, of getting you to take the first step. Galactic likes to flirt with styles, brushing gently up against a musical neighbor--a hip-hop flavor or a Fats Domino-inspired backbeat. "We have a lot of different genres touching, for sure. It's never one specific thing. It's hard [for us] to feel like we fit into one real mold. Our whole thing is just taking funky beats and going for it. In jazz you get that, in hip-hop you get that, in rock you get that, and in soul you get that."
The band's reputation for cooking up new material, for going into uncharted territory on stage and for playing loud and large has given Mercurio the chance to "see the love." "We strive for locking it in, and people recognize that," Mercurio said. "It keeps me going--seeing the fans and seeing the love. Our fans always want to hear new music. Being in this band and seeing the world like this--I learn a lot about life and how people are. A lot of my preconceived notions have just gone out the door. We've seen things unravel and get back together again. That becomes your outlook. It's incredible to put all that into music." Galactic performs at 10:15, Saturday, July 13.
Forty-eight hours ago, I was like you--just another normal person living my life, completely unaware of my proximity to a Death Metal Armada. I was a member of the uninitiated, slightly confused group of people who might have heard something about "Bobby Collins' Death Metal Armada" but dismissed it as the dark rambling of some errant, headbanging disciple of speed metal. All that has changed now. After a clandestine meeting with this pop triumvirate in an "undisclosed location" in the Denver metro area, my eyes have been opened to the transforming, healing power of "The DMA," as they are called. And it is good. I also learned about the band's connection to former child actor Corey Feldman. What follows is an uncut, unedited transcript of one man's journey into a Death Metal Armada--a surprisingly sunny world of performance art, goofy parody, bubble machines and pop songs with one very clear purpose: to entertain the hell out of you.
John Common: I'm John, who are you?
Death Metal Armada: I'm Bobby Collins. I sing, play keyboards, guitar, theremin, and a vocoder.
JC: Are you the spiritual prophet of the band?
Collins: So to speak--I'm like Cain in Kung Fu. I travel the world and have adventures.
DMA: I'm Stefan Englund. I do some singing, play bass, write songs, and make Bobby look good.
DMA: I'm Jed Kopp: I play drums.
Englund: He makes me look cool.
JC: So what the hell is a Death Metal Armada, anyway?
Collins: I came up with the name about 3 years ago. We used to be a lounge act--lime green suits, the whole bit. I never thought we'd ever get a gig--ever. So I wanted to name it something that it completely wasn't. So if we ever did get a gig, we'd freak people out with the name. Then they'd show up and we'd be playing lounge music. We never thought anything would ever come from it. The name is everything we're not. All we are is super happy pop music--lots of weird, '70s synth sounds. A power trio. When we play live, we try to go as nuts as possible.
JC: I've heard that you guys are putting the "show" back in show business. True?
Collins: We definitely want people to know that when we put on a show, it's a must-see situation. We usually have a theme. Like, we've done a "Circus Of The Stars" show. And an "Arena Rock" show. We had fog machines and big drum risers. We even dressed up in wigs and tight ripped jeans for the encore that night and did our version of "Highway To Hell." --There were a lot of guitar face-offs.
JC: Being in a band is mostly an ego-crushing, exhausting, money-losing endeavor. Why do you bother?
Collins: 'Cause it's a blast. We put a lot of the planning into our shows--usually a couple of months and our own money. But when it all comes together that one night, and people have a great time, it's worth it. So hopefully, for two hours when you come in and are entertained.
Kopp: Salisbury steak sandwich.
Collins: Don't lose focus.
JC: Was it good?
Kopp: This is the only Salisbury steak SANDWICH I've ever had. I mean, I've had Salisbury steak before--but never in this form. I mean, --They have this in a sandwich?--This is a damn good sandwich.
Collins: Don't lose focus.
JC: What's this I hear about the DMA opening for Corey Feldman?
Collins: He's the child actor that was in The Goonies, Stand By Me and The Lost Boys. I hear he does covers of songs like "Jingle Bell Rock."
Englund: I've never heard any of his music.
Collins: We've opened for some pretty cool people like El Vez, Super Diamond, and Matthew Sweet. But ever since we got this gig, everybody I know has been coming up to me saying, 'I will DEFINITELY be there for that one.'
Englund: We're hoping there's a Goonies theme song--if there is, we'll learn it for the show.
Collins: It's his 31st birthday, the night of the Bluebird show. We're going to make it special.
JC: Back to your show. What are people going to see if they come to a DMA show?
Collins: You're gonna see three guys all dressed in really bad, matching thrift store pants and vests, who look more like some high school lettermen than a rock band. Westword gave us the "Best Stage Attire" award this year.
Englund: The greatest thing I can hear someone say to me after a DMA show is" 'I had so much fun.' I don't think it really matters how good we are at all.
Kopp: People walk in to a DMA show expecting death metal. Some walk out. But the ones who stay usually have a great time.
JC: Any final words?
Collins: We flat out want to entertain the living hell out of you. We're trying to make kid music for adults. Remember how it felt watching the high school talent show contest in your senior year? You had a blast watching people do things you would NEVER EVER do--in front of God and everybody. And if you were like me, you got a little jealous of the winners when the gym erupted in fanatical applause. Welcome to Bobby Collins Death Metal Armada: the high school band that won your high school talent show contest and never stopped. Their music combines '70s arena rock with nerdy concept music (think Devo or They Might Be Giants) and wraps it in a blanket of dead serious goofiness And although DMA certainly has a big dose of the novelty act in them, they're no joke band. In fact, they may be growing up--they are doing mostly originals at their shows now, recording their first studio album and thinking about doing some careful touring. But don't worry, you can take the kid out of high school, but you can't take the high school out of the kid.--John Common
Bobby Collins Death Metal Armada is playing Sunday, July 14 at 8 pm at The Bluebird Theater opening for Corey Feldman.
Blips and beeps. Odd changes. Like a three-year-old playing with a Moog. But practiced, structured, even if that structure is condemned and guys from the city are coming with jackhammers. It is the work of Alan Suel, Paraffin Comatose . This album reminded me of eating vacuum lint in a dark room dressed in Telly Savalas's bedclothes. It lurches and flips, a gasping neon tetra stuck in the shag carpet. A pimply teenager spills milk on the dying fish and it turns into Anita Bryant, but who is Suel to care? He thinks binary code, talks in short flurts.
Song number one on the first disc (a two-disc set? Amazingly, yes), "Feels Like Time" commands the inimitable obsequious beep of the cellular phone with a Can-like finder's ethos. One can hear the influence of nearly every keyboard beater/sound collector ever to infringe our aural freedoms. "Vesper Projector" is a cavalcade of divergent and (un?)intentionally hilarious nods to the Germans. "Texas Steak-House Whore" contains not a reference to one. As it should be.
Look around for a man recording your farts on the bus. It might be Suel. He describes this work as "electronic/experimental" and both words could be applied with or without irony. The experiment might be whether or not you can make it to disc two without melting through the floorboards. Electronic? Our guess is electricity was used in the creation. Listen to both albums at once and you will receive detailed instruction on how to assemble a 1944 Studebaker. They are also timed to coincide perfectly with the Renoir classic L . Atalante . They may also, in a pinch, be used as an industrial-strength floor cleaner.
Too many blits and foonts make reviewer something-something. How, though, can one not appreciate the effort, the hubris, the primal struggle for art? Wage on with your electronic, experimental war against a world that wants three chords and a spit mist. Alan Suel has created a vast soundscape of warring whack'em moles, a world where Timex makes the best watches and headphones are large and orange. --Alex Neth
The newest band to rise out of Denver's suburban ashes delivers all the youthful angst and societal skepticism we should expect from post-Columbine creativity. Façade's self-titled debut EP brings home the heavy issues that college life and apartment living so often stir in us as fledgling twentysomethings. It's dark, it's satirical, and it's pretty good.
Singer Kitty Vincent has a solid Courtney Love thing going on, back from the early days when Love had a mysterious and edgy coolness about her. Vincent's voice remains comfortable in her rather narrow range, but she uses it to the fullest. The songs soak up as much of the dark and brooding atmosphere as our sunny skies will allow but manage to sound distinct and different at every turn. Joe Grobelny's guitar playing isn't the wall-of-sound that so many neo-Goth bands attempt and instead offers a wide range of power chords, alt-blues minimalism and steady rhythmic structure.
An overall tongue-in-cheek vibe and unforgiving irony tackle the issues apparent in the track titles: "Apathy," "Something Pure," "Overwhelmed," and "Decay." The second track "Plutonia," is the strongest, with a slow and lilting gentleness punched here and there by Vincent's emotional vocals. This is a promising beginning. --Judy B
Façade plays live often. The website offers more info: www.facadesound.com.
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