Tarfumes

Radio City

On stage at Radio City Music Hall

Huh?

"I could have been a fool forever, but I'm not made that way."

I saw Bettye LaVette a couple of weeks ago.

I hadn't actually heard any of her music, but I had a hunch this would be something I'd regret missing.  Her backing band's opening song, unfortunately, made me sink into my seat with embarrassment.  With the exception of drummer Darryl Pierce, they were playing with all of the fire and invention of a wedding band who just got a request for "Sweet Home Chicago" from the groom's drunk uncle in the third hour of the reception.  As soon as Bettye arrived on stage, however, she galvanized the band, the room, the city of Northampton, probably the state of Massachusetts...you see where I'm going with this (afterwards Pierce, who played a brilliant solo that was equal parts Max Roach, Ringo Starr, and Tony Allen, told me, "She makes us work!") 

She opened with "The Stealer," originally done by Free (which I haven't heard) and done definitively by the Faces (which is pretty much part of my DNA at this point).  But it's Bettye's now.  I wrote about this in a previous post, how the shock of hearing that song from that musician can be so wonderfully (and all too rarely) sustained.

Forgoing the usual encore -- that insulting showbiz practice of leaving the stage, pretending to be "finished," only to be perfunctorily coaxed back* -- she stood on the stage with her arms spread, an antenna for the love in the room.  Maybe she figured, "Hey, if they're going to applaud for me to do an encore, I might as well be on stage when they do it."  She closed with Sinead O'Connor's "I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got."  I saw Sinead do this in 1990, and for the first half of the song she owned the room (not easy, since it was the 3600-seat Chicago Theatre).  But some shmoes in the crowd decided to ruin it by shouting, and the end of the song was practically buried in cheers.  Bettye had no such problems.  The clinking of glasses (the show took place at Mr. Burns' Casino, who decided that selling drinks took priority over the music) provided an eerie counterpoint to her voice, almost as if we were eavesdropping on a private moment (actually, it reminded me of nothing so much as Duke Ellington's pensive "Lotus Blossom," taped mid-rehearsal with the background chatter enhancing the introspection).  Bettye stopped time, stopped it right in that space between breathing and singing.

(Since writing the above, I finally heard a couple of her records.  "The Stealer" is from her Child Of The Seventies record, and her latest, Scene of the Crime, features Drive-By Truckers as her backing band.  They're not quite as effective as the swampy all-stars on I've Got My Own Hell To Raise -- the Truckers are too reverent, approaching the music as something to be studied instead of wrangled.  But ...Hell To Raise is absolutely silverplating, especially her versions of Lucinda Williams' "Joy" and the aforementioned Sinead O'Connor cover.)

*"I think that it's of the utmost importance to leave an audience wanting more rather than exhausted and moaning, 'Thank Christ that's all over.'  That's why we don't do no encores.  They're a bloody con.  You shouldn't do 'em, cos they're the biggest con ever and Led Zeppelin were one of the worst groups for starting that whole encore thing off." --Roger Daltrey, the Who (1975)

"I do not, as a rule, do encores. When I have finished playing, I have indeed finished playing. ... It's an old show business routine. When I stop I have nothing else left to play." --Bill Dixon (2002)

mistakes

First mistake: I tried to re-read sections of Fred Goodman's useful-in-spots-but-fundamentally-flawed Mansion On The Hill.  His bizarre rants against Bruce Springsteen, Jon Landau, and Dave Marsh are, like the rest of the book, based on a seriously shaky premise, and come off as bitter, jealous, and deeply confused (I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to learn that Landau somehow out-maneuvered Goodman in becoming Springsteen's manager in 1975).  He's upset that he missed out on (or found himself on the wrong side of) the revolutionary politics of the 1960s, so he belittles them by taking a condescending attitude towards the MC5, and/or ignores them -- to him, Edwin Starr's "War" is nothing more than a "Motown oldie."  He sees an inexcusable conflict of interest in Springsteen's friend-of-a-friend Greil Marcus giving Born To Run a rave review in Rolling Stone, but sees no such conflict with Kurt Loder writing the liner notes for the 1985 Velvet Underground reissues when Loder was Rolling Stone's reviews editor; the reissues received 4- and 5-star reviews in the magazine.  But Kurt Loder provided a testimonial for the back cover of Goodman's book, thus creating a conflict-of-interest vortex (especially by Goodman's exacting standards).  As far as I've been able to discern, Fred Goodman hasn't done shit since Mansion On The Hill; presumably he's currently residing in the "Who gives a fuck?" file.

Second mistake: I played a solo concert in Boston while gravely ill.  I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to Dave, Greg, Bhob, Forbes, Andrew, and Josh whom I'm certain got sick because of me.  I spent the better part of the next day wondering how I'd managed to pack up my gear, drive the two hours to Boston, set up, play, tear down, and drive two hours home while barely able to breathe.  I'm glad I did it, though, as it was one of the better shows I've played in a long time. 

Third mistake: In the middle of watching Where The Truth Lies (a film as fully realized as any of Egoyan's other works; the territory covered is extremely atypical for him, leading to confusion on the part of most critics), I decided to skip ahead to the end credits to see which version of Charles Mingus' "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat" was used (it was "Theme For Lester Young" from Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus).  Unfortunately, I also saw the credit for a song that, had I not known it was coming, would have made me fall out of my chair clear through to the basement.  I won't ruin it for you, but I guarantee you didn't see/hear it coming.  It's one of those rare collisions of favorite artists (in this case, Egoyan and the band that provides the mystery song) that works so perfectly -- like Bettye LaVette singing Sinead O'Connor's "I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got," or Son Volt playing Cheap Trick's "Downed," or Pete Townshend covering Gram Parsons' "Christine's Tune" -- that the intensity of the initial shock of surprise is sustained throughout the sequence.