New D’Angelo!

I have been waiting since 2005 to say that.

Every five years, D’Angelo would emerge from his cave and release something amazing:
1995: Brown Sugar
2000: Voodoo.

In 2005, we waited. And waited. And waited.

Nothing.

That year, John Mayer endearingly wrote an open letter in Esquire, which said, in part:

I’m writing to ask you to put out a follow-up to one of the few records to change my life forever, Voodoo. When Voodoo came out in 2000, I stood in line at Tower Records in Atlanta at midnight to get it . . . I’m no less excited by it today than I was when I played it full blast in my mother’s Plymouth Voyager on the way to my bullshit job.

Now, in honor of A’s birthday, we have a new D’Angelo song.

Listen:
Download from Idolator.

Buy:
D’Angelo, Brown Sugar
D’Angelo, Voodoo.

Bonus:
From Live at the Jazz Cafe:
D’Angelo, Me and Those Dreamin’ Eyes of Mine.

 

Live Performances – Alicia Keys, Ben Harper

A great live performance is transcendent.

Alicia Keys, If I Ain’t Got You.

Live at the 2005 Grammy Awards, being ably assisted by Jamie Foxx (in full on Ray Charles mode) and backed by a full orchestra, this is my favorite of the five versions we have of this song.

Listen: Alicia Keys, If I Ain’t Got You.
Buy: Alicia Keys, Unplugged

Ben Harper, In Your Eyes (Peter Gabriel cover).

It’s a beautiful acoustic version of the song. About 4 minutes in, the audience starts singing the “missing part” and he thanks them. It’s a lovely, moving cover of a beautiful song.

Listen: Ben Harper, In Your Eyes (Peter Gabriel cover).
Buy: Ben Harper, Live From Mars.

 

Beirut Live on KEXP

Brooklyn Vegan has a link to an mp3 of Beirut’s live performance on KEXP during SX last week.

 

"Peace, Togetherness, and Revolution" – Public Enemy at SXSW

Tonight, I went with B to see Public Enemy at Auditorium Shores, an amphitheater on the shore of Town Lake, which is known as the Colorado River elsewhere.

It’s a beautiful location with downtown as the backdrop:

There were tens of thousands of people there. I am terrible at estimating crowd size, but it was a remarkable number of people. We were nowhere near the stage and there were 2 or 3 hundred feet worth of people behind us.

The show was decent. Chuck D, Flava Flav, Professor Griff were all there, and they had a live band. The sound was not great. We were over past the speakers, but it just wasn’t very loud.

The set didn’t last more than 90 minutes. They jumped around a bit, mostly old stuff, a couple of new songs. Everything hung together well. There was a little too much Flava Flav for my taste. It was his birthday, so there were at least three separate mentions of it. There was some great political stuff.

Overall, it wasn’t great. It wasn’t the group though. It was the audience. The audience sucked. Hard. We have a problem of bad audiences here in town. People go to shows and stand in front of the band and talk. It’s incredibly rude and infuriating.

There were plenty of people talking throughout the entire show. Not, “I love this song!” and then shutting up, but “I loved Flavor of Love!” “My camera’s not working” “Where are we going when this is done.” The whining! I was absolutely appalled.

I wanted to punch them very hard. I moved as far away as I could, but it was dark and packed and there was only so far I could wander from B to get away from the talking.

How people can be so rude is just beyond me. It’s disrespectful to the audience and it’s disrespectful to everyone around them who are trying to enjoy the show.

 

SX – Lines, Pull, and (Missing) Beirut Live

I missed the Beirut performance on Wednesday. I knew I wouldn’t have been able to get in so I didn’t even try. S tried and seeing the line of platinum badges cooling their heels outside, knew he wouldn’t have made it in either.

What teeny-tiny little pull I have around town vanishes entirely when SX rolls through. None of the bars in which I am a “vip” host SX shows. (Heck, even those places often forget what I actually do for a living. I only have pull there because I know the bartenders/owners/staff and I tip generously. Every once in a while, I mention it after they’ve seen me with tattooed men with interesting facial hair or young guys with long floppy bangs. Since they all know A, it’s always good to say, “hey those cute young guys I was here with last night . . . that was work.”)

Years and years ago, I dated a lobbyist, which basically meant he was a professional barfly who dropped massive amounts of cash all over town. He had also been a professional athlete who played here in college, so he was denied access nowhere, nor was I. My father and his friends flew in for sxsw that year and we, without badges, were granted access into every venue we wanted without waiting. To the unabashed delight of my father’s friends, Clifford Antone himself escorted us into Antone’s for a show.

Sigh.

Pull rocks. Absence of pull . . . keeps me at home rather than face the daunting, madding crowds.

Below are two live mp3s from a Beirut show last August. You can download the whole thing at the Live Music Archives. There is also a show from October.

Mp3: Beirut, Postcards from Italy (live).
Mp3: Beirut, Elephant Gun (live).

Buy Gulag Orkestar and Lon Gisland on Amazon and then get Pompeii, the two song EP exclusively from eMusic.