I probably see more live music than the average person. I tried to make a list one day, but that was an almost impossible task. I came back to the list the next day because I had forgotten to put Sonny Rollins on it. When you start forgetting that you've seen Newk live, you know you've seen a few shows.
My summer has been bookended by a couple of concerts that will stay with me, but for different reasons. The first was Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings at the Clay Center here in Charleston. The second was Cee-Lo Green, a show I've just returned from, in Huntington. The two shows are noteworthy for how incredibly different they were.
I should say that I'm writing just this moment because I'm a little angry. Or maybe I'm trying to cope. I don't know. Actually, I think I'm confused more than anything else.
Let me preface by saying that I'm a big Cee-Lo fan. I thought that St. Elsewhere was the best pop album of 2006. "Crazy" is one of my favorite songs and I've referred to it elsewhere. And "Fuck You" is undoubtedly one of the catchiest tunes out this past year, one I find myself singing full-voiced at entirely inappropriate times. Did you catch him on the Grammys? The dude played the song with the muppets. How cool is that?
I've had a really busy day and I've got a packed work schedule all weekend, so I was a little worried about coming home late. But it didn't matter because I was excited. Live music, baby!
Here's the short version:
We arrive about 15 minutes before show time, grab a couple of beers and have a seat. The concert was part of the Marshall (University) Artist Series, so they had a bunch of announcements about the series, the underwriters and all that jazz. The show starts about 7:12. Cee-Lo comes out with a chick band, all wearing Marshall University gear, skating shorts and pig tails. All except the drummer were faking. Or at least, they weren't playing the music that was coming from the speakers. Cee-Lo sings - "Bright Lights and the Big City," "Fuck You," "Crazy," a couple of new ones, covers of "Rock the Casbah" and "Don't You Wish Your Boyfriend Was Hot Like Me" - then calls it a night. "Thank you, you've been a great audience." The clock said 7:42.
It was still daylight when we left the arena and I just couldn't stop thinking about the contrast between these two concerts.
When I saw Sharon Jones, she was following Percy Sledge. Most of the audience came to see Percy and several left before she even took the stage. Almost no one in the audience knew who she was. Cee-Lo had no opening act and everyone was there to see him, a celebrity. Cee-Lo, nominated for four Grammys, brought backing tracks and a fake rhythm section. Sharon is probably not rolling in cash, but brought a 12-piece band with horns and back-up singers. Cee-Lo phoned it in and quit after about 30 minutes. Sharon quit after about three hours and the energy never dropped.
What accounts for the difference? I'm not sure, except that I can tell you Sharon Jones has soul. That's why we go hear music. Yeah, we care about chops and celebrity may get you through the door, but at the end of the day, it's all about soul. We go into a concert wanting to see something special. We want to leave knowing that the performer has left herself on that stage. We want the blood, sweat and tears. We want to know that they need us as bad as we need them.
I remember being worried at the beginning of the Dap Kings concert. The audience was slow to catch on. They'd just sat through 90 minutes of an R&B legend on a Thursday night and didn't know who this short little 55-year-old woman was when she took the stage. But she brought it from the first downbeat. They played medleys of dances from the 60s and she demonstrated every one: the watusi, the mashed potato, the funky broadway, the funky chicken, the boogaloo and the rest. She courted the audience. She seduced and teased and told those funny stories soul singers do about their no-good men and their trifling ways. And she sang. Dear God, did she sing.
It was her first time in West Virginia. Who knows what she thought when she got started. What she probably thought was, "I'm gonna have to work this crowd." She did work us. We were out of our chairs, clapping, singing, shaking a tail-feather. We danced until we had to sit down for a minute, but Sharon just kept going. She worked the band like James Brown. Actually, she seemed like no one so much as the Godfather himself and I remember thinking, "She's the hardest working woman in show business."
She had something to say and she knew that we would want to hear it. She knew her songs would mean something to us because they meant something to her. She believed in them, and knew we could relate to the fundamental humanity in her music. When she finally walked off the stage after the final encore, you knew you had seen everything she was, laid bare. That's soul.
Cee-Lo knew the crowd was there to see someone famous. He wore a Marshall track suit and told the audience they had a lot of "energy." He was even clever enough to play on the recent disappointments of the Herd faithful by dedicating "Fuck You" to West Virginia University. But honestly, he could just as easily have dedicated it to all us suckers dumb enough to shell out the paper for his show.
I've seen some good shows in my life, sometimes in unexpected places. I've seen Glenn David Andrews play to a room of 25 like it's the Superdome. I've seen Beyonce play the Superdome like she needed the cash. (She brought an all-chick band, too, but you better believe none of them were faking it.) I've seen Glenn David's cousin, Trombone Shorty, playing the auditorium at West Virginia State like it was Treme on St. Joseph's Day. I've seen Tower of Power playing a run-down casino that smelled like ash trays and bring the whole place down. I've seen 68-year-old Fred Wesley passing the peas at an Irish bar in Chicago and 95-year-old Pinetop Perkins doing his boogie at Antone's in Austin. I've heard Ginny Hawker, seated alone on stage at Glenville State College, singing the most bone-chilling Primitive Baptist hymns you can imagine. And I've heard The Del McCoury Band at Carnegie Hall (the little one) in Lewisburg, and they were so high and lonesome it could make an Episcopalian handle snakes.
They all had soul. They all had that thing . . . that thing about music that makes us come back again and again and again.
Let me tell you some other places I've heard it.
I've heard it listening to a group of teenagers on a football field on a Friday night. I've heard it at a 7:30 AM choir practice. I've heard it in the middle of a rehearsal when eight or nine high school students decide they own a tune they've heard Cannonball or Miles play, and suddenly realize they have something to say that's worth hearing.
They all had soul, too.
The concert tonight has me confused, but it also has me angry. There were several hundred 18 and 19-year-olds there, some probably seeing a rock concert for the first time. They were probably excited, probably thought about what they should wear, wondered about seeing their first big superstar. Now they've left the arena not knowing the pure, electric joy that live music can bring.
Maybe Cee-Lo just didn't think a bunch of West Virginia college kids deserved that type of soul. You know what I say to that? "Fuck you."
