[North Carolina / New Jersey] Things shifted after I figured out my main cerfuddle. Lee Fields was the headliner, not the opener. It turns out… Lee Fields is a fucking big deal – he’s played with KOOL AND THE GANG. He’s described as the SECOND JAMES BROWN. This is why the tickets were so expensive… this is why the line to get in was so long… this is why so many girls were walking around in weird gold-flake jackets. What honestly convinced me to stay though was seeing that Lee Fields collaborates with the El Michels Affair band, who did a beautiful, creative cover of the Wu-Tang’s Enter the 37th Chamber album. [I’d like to take a moment to thank my sister for passing me a cassette tape of that Wu-Tang album sometime in the mid 1990s, even though we were barely speaking at that time. Coincidentally, or maybe not, the doorman had a Wu-Tang shirt on.] What also convinced me to stay was the shift in the music during the intermission: hard funk jangle music of British crime comedies like Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels… Beastie Boys. It was a long intermission but the band emerged before The Lee… keyboard, trumpet, sax, guitar, bass guitar… they were tight as a nun’s fist. Pros, even down to the coordinated body sways. Nerds too. White of course. Lee emerged – despite being in his 70s, he was an on-spot dynamo – everything a 70s soul funk superstar should be - Biden could take some cues. It was crowded and the crowd was drunk – there was a pack of men and some women behind me chatting it up and I was giving them stern looks, remembering how when I moved to Portland I was struck at how less respectful they are of live music than Austin audiences. But then one of the guys started singing along to a Lee Fields song and I was mollified – I didn’t even know either of the bands I came to see for christ’s sake. The lyrics were thought-provoking, motivating: “Take my head, my shoes, my girl. I still got it, I still got it… Take my car, my house, my bed… I still got it, I still got it.” Haha. But then he started talking to the crowd, calling out a couple in the front (heterosexual obviously): “Give it up for this couple!!” telling the man “You should be down on your knees!” I clinched my teeth, waiting for the righteous Portlanders to rise up, but they laughed & cheered… whaaaa??? And THEN the song shifted to: “Hey ladies, big ones, short ones, tall ones. Black ones, white ones, all ones. I still got it, I still got it.” In this context, it was standup comedy for me jaja. Like my book club discussed, there is an inherent classism in progressive politics. And like a Jewish lesbian standup said: Dave Chapelle is like 70 – what are you expecting from him? Of course he doesn’t get pronouns! People in their 70s still hate Black people for christ’s sake! … In a concerning item I may need to submit to the Neighborhood Listen podcast, a man in a woodsy “Antelope” t-shirt, with a rainbow of sorts splashed across it, was by my side every time I took a glance around, regardless of whether I was on the far right or far left side of the room 😐.
Comments
Post a Comment