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when not to cover funk
Friday, February 25 2011
Yesterday Deborah had invited us to attend the CD release party of a friend of hers, let's call her Compactia. Gretchen didn't want to go, and neither did Ray, but Nancy was up for it and of course then everyone turned to me. What was I going to do. My attitude was one of, "I don't know, I'll get back to you tomorrow." Gretchen was not impressed, and neither was Deborah, each for opposite reasons. Gretchen wanted alone time and Deborah wanted me to be there. By midday today I'd grudgingly decided to go, mostly because of the venue: Keegan Ales in Kingston, a place where reliably fun times can be had.
At a little before eight I drove down to Ray and Nancy's place in Old Hurley to pick up Nancy, and then I drove with her to Keegan Ales.
We were about a quarter of the way into our first beers when Deborah showed up, and she introduced us to "Compactia," the singer-songwriter who would be performing tonight. With her angular haircut and facial piercings, she seemed like a hip youngish woamn, and just flirty enough to give whatever she was to perform some judgmental slack. Maybe the music was going to be alright. But I was a little nervous when she promised to be performing a "funk cover" later in the evening. Any white band that does funk covers is immediately suspect.
So then the music started. Lemme just get this out of the way: it was absolutely dreadful. The first song didn't even have a chorus; it was all about the "Shanananananah Nananananah" over and over and over atop an endless Phish-by-way-of-Ten-Thousand-Maniacs groove. Deborah and I agreed this was not a good example of songwriting, with Deborah even saying that if she had a bunch of "nananananahs" in a song, she wouldn't consider it finished. The musicians were all competent, and Compactia had a serviceable voice, but it was dreary dreary music. Interestingly, all the musicians except Compactia looked to be in either their late 50s or early-to-mid 60s. It made me wonder if the band was just a sad mix of aging musicians who had somehow found a pretty young thing to give them a little zazz.
There was a song about astrology. There was a song about the critics. We were reminded that Compactia and perhaps her band would be opening for Loretta Lynn (and then they proceeded to play their horrible take on country music). The kicker, though, was the funk cover, "Thank You (Falettin me be Mice Elf Agin)." I have a pretty lossless copy of the original stored in my wetware memory banks, and I could compare that version to Compactia's in real time. What can I say? Compactia didn't have what it took to perform funk. Her delivery was flat and unconvincing. I'd use the word "souless," but I don't believe in the existence of souls and nobody has ever satisfactorily defined what a soul actually is.
There were two or three things that kept the evening entertaining despite all of this. The first of these was the company: Deborah, Nancy, and I were all on the same page about the quality of the music. I turned to Nancy at one point and said, "This is like watching The Bachelor." The second saving grace was the beer, all of which Nancy had to buy because I didn't have any cash and credit cards did not appear to be an acceptable method of transaction. The third was the the drummer who showed up a couple songs in. He was a huge Jabba the Hut of a man who barely moved as he banged out his rhythms. Deborah said it looked as though his hands were completely detached from his body, like animations across the vast vertical plane of his black teeshirt.
There was also some entertainment to be had by watching the crowd. Most of the people in attendance where greying hippies ranging steeply upward from my age, although there were also a few young women. Early in the evening, an especially attractive pair of the latter got out on the floor and danced with each other using moves that looked almost choreographed. I wondered if they'd been paid. Other than them, few ventured to dance even though the music aspired very hard to be danceable.
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