[California] 2024 is the year of hobbies: so live music is to be seen once a month. I have one song from this band on one of my annual Best of playlists: “Foolish Love.” When I’m jogging, I skip most every song that isn’t hard punk or hard club but this song doesn’t get skipped. Hopped up swanky joy. So on a motivated Wednesday evening, I saw they were coming to town in three days and decided why not. The trend of shows I take NiceButAlsoDangerous to (darkwave, death metal) have been traumatic enough for him that he agreed to set me free. IfIdBeenBornInIowa is always scheming to be my music pal & was on this invite like flan on flin. And then she bailed last minute, despite pricey tickets… and so I was free. Weeeeeeeeee! I was going to get a nice Mexican dinner beforehand in hip NE Portland but the parking, the waits… so instead I stopped on a whim after passing Mad Hanna. Unfortunately it wasn’t a tiki bar like I thought… The bartender opened: “Shots?” It’d been a befuddling day and I said, “Noo? A beer please”… He said it like two more times and it started feeling more like a taunt than a joke. It was a dive bar – I had my glasses on, my laptop at my hip – I had stuff to grade for christ’s sake. I hazarded to ask if they had food – he pointed to a mini fridge & toaster oven in the corner: ‘that should give you an idea of what we got.’ The gauntlet had been laid and I couldn’t back out now, what with the eyes of six locals on me: “fine, I’ll take the chicken fingers.” So instead of some luscious Mexican food, I was saddled with thin flimsy chicken fingers from the freezer. Post-dinner, the difficulties continued. Parking’s always a challenge in that part of Portland but I was more disturbed by the three block line – because, really, who besides me is listening to the Monophonics???? Not the Portland youth!... It was a real mainstream crowd but mixed in terms of age, race, gender… which for Portland is to say: still mostly White. Wonder Ballroom’s become real militant about security checks but it was weird that they hadn’t processed people, especially with the opening band already having started. I suffered through inane line conversation… made it in maybe halfway through the openers’ set. They had a trumpet, tuba, drums, keyboards, two watery sounding (in a good way) guitars. They brought to mind this amazing random compilation I came across a long time ago: Midwest Funk. The lead singer, also the keyboardist, was emotive with hand posturing that was rap reminiscent. Also like Jack Black as a soul singer. On one especially jumped up song, the sound busted … but Wonder fixed it. His voice might be a soul funk stereotype but it's a good one… and with the bits of 70s scratch funk…. And the brown chicken brown cow vibes… and then he went and cried “West Coast is best coast,” I couldn’t deny I liked them. I liked them a lot. They’re from California – I can’t determine where. Like the line waiting to get in, I was annoyed at how White the band was, when their sound drew so heavily on classic Black soul. Worse, their main promo photo features a person with an afro whom I do not believe is in the band, at least currently, or whom at least has a very different haircut now.
But it turns out, I was the ignorant one because this was the band I came
to see, the Monophonics, and the headliner was the Black legend.
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