5 from 21
Monday's Rhythm Devils show will mark the official end of our extended 21st season, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to list my five (or so!) favorite moments from the shows of 21. Mind you, I probably attend less than a quarter of the shows we stage... since my duties largely obligate me to be in "the office" for the bulk of the normal business week and I do value having a life outside of work, I can't possibly even see all of the shows that I want to see (and I know I've missed some good ones), so this is a heavily filtered list. And they are not ranked in a particular order...
1. Bajofondo with Forro in the Dark (9/25/09): Last year's Global Roots Festival highlight, and a unanimous staff pick for one of the top shows in our history, Bajofondo from Argentina and Uruguay gave a performance with the perfect arc of traditional virtuosity to modern, multi-media entertainment. Forro in the Dark were a great opener, with a set of pure, dancable fun.
2. Dirty Projectors with Tune Yards (11/11/09): We got lucky with this one, having booked Dirty Projectors just after the release of Bitte Orca, which ended up catapulting the band to the top of the hipster charts. So it was a real treat to watch these guys in our intimate room to a very sold out audience, and experience their amazing vocal "hocketing" live.
3. Bassekou Koyate and Ngoni Ba (4/10/2010): This was the season where we finally had an opportunity to string together a number of great African shows (thus beginning an ongoing series we call West Africa West Bank), and this co-present with the Walker was the centerpiece. A thoroughly delightful concert, made all the more so by the rare opportunity for a mini-residency surrounding the date, which included three school programs and a live TV performance.
4. Balkan Beat Box with The Brass Messengers (8/4/2010): Their third Cedar performance was worth the wait. The evening was simply the most fun you can have with your clothes on. And by the end of the evening the full house of dancing bodies made the room so sauna-like that nobody really wanted to actually have their clothes on.
5. Only one left, huh? Well, I could go with Dave Rawlings Machine with Brianna Lane (12/8/2009), Dear Companion featuring Ben Sollee and Daniel Martin Moore with the Ericksons (4/2/2010), or the amazing triple-bill show with Megafaun, Charlie Parr and Breathe Owl Breath (4/9/2010), but since I have a great video capturing the peak moment, I'm going with the Thao & Mirah with the Most of All (7/1/2010), which brought together two of our favorites, whose styles compliment each other perfectly. This is one video clip (taken by our own Jason Koffman) that I urge you to give your full attention, all the way through. It's a great song with a wonderful message, and it shows off how incredible the sound of our room can be, even when heard through a cheap, tiny phone camera microphone...
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Every once and a while, my dear friend Veronica likes to set up high, lingering lobs at the front of the net (using the tennis analogy here) for yours truly, and she did exactly that once again with the end of her previous post in discussing the fairness of certain digital deals such as the one at eMusic:
- "...it is probably safe to assume that the deals cut to get all that music onto eMusic were not consummated at gunpoint. Both sides evidently saw beneficience and signed the dotted line. That tells me all I need to know."
We've spent plenty of pixels on this blog in the past deriding the business acumen and ethics of record companies, an easy target for even the casual observer over the past 10 years or so in particular. But it's really precious to hear Veronica, who for years was actually the Label Liason at the most powerful record retailer in the world, and who therefore actually had to deal with some of these people one-on-one, use the word "beneficience" in any context related to record industry deals. It's no exageration to say that the bulk of record label executives, especially at the majors, are at best clueless, and at worst gangsters. The fact that they are willing to make any of these deals should probably give just the opposite of solace!
