,The Alternate Reality of

Dub Side of the Moon

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That Pink Floyd's 1973 Dark Side of the Moon is one of the iconic classics of rock is indisputable-- darkly atmospheric and almost neurotic in its themes of greed, war, self-absorption and class struggle. And then there was its aural quality, which often eclipsed the themes. "Ya gotta hear this through headphones!" was the review I heard most often from my stoner friends at the time. In that regard, the album made me realize that rock had become more a medium for engineers than musicians and set me on a punkish course to rediscover the roots of rock, which led, in a circuitous route, to reggae. The almost soothing beat of reggae belied its political underpinnings and seduced me immediately. I was the first kid on my block to wear a Bob Marley tee-shirt, much to the bewilderment of the East Texas citizenry.

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Filmed in September 2005, Easy Star All-Stars' Dub Side of the Moon Live is an unlilely but infinitely satisfying reinvention of the Pink Floyd original. Make no mistake about it-- this is no novelty performance. What the All-Stars have done is taken baby boomer insecurities and transmuted them into a stand alone performance that encompasses a world view of--well, war, greed, self-absorption and class struggle. Moreover, they have brought Dark Side of the Moon into the 21st century.

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Using the framing device of an animated "rasta-naut" awakening from stasis aboard the USS Syd Barrett (a fitting tribute to the founding force of Pink Floyd), Dub Side seamlessly transports the viewer into a world that is at once both familiar and unsettling in its rootsy origins. There are no intricate laseriums here--only strobes and a thematic full moon background projection.

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It's all we need.

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.The band quickly launches into an exhilarating rendition of "Breathe (In the Air)" that cascades into Tamar-Kali's jazz-infused interpretation of "Time." Augmented by the flute of Jenny Hill and the toasting of Menny More, it is here that Dub Side takes on a multi-ethnic life of its own. And while her vocals are reminiscent of Claire Torry's in "The Great Gig in the Sky," Tamar-Kali's add a new dimension with her sudden throatiness at various breaks. "Money" becomes a new anthem in the hands of the All-Stars, thanks in part to the socio-political dub but moreso to Junior Jazz's guitar licks.

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Technically, there is nothing visually arresting about Dub Side of the Moon--it's a fairly straightforward concert film. For that matter, I wouldn't call it a reggae classic. But at every moment of the performance, I was left with the perception that rock will never die--it only evolves and reinvents itself.

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As the pundits are fond of reminding us, we live in a different world now. To dismiss Dub Side of the Moon as a novelty would be shameful. To call it a remake of Dark Side of the Moon is to do it a disservice. While it never strays far from its source material, Dub Side is a work that brings the fears of the seventies into the realities of the 2K's. It is to Pink Floyd's credit that they envisioned the scenario in which we now live. It is to the Easy Star All-Stars' credit that both paid tribute to that vision and made it, in the process, absolutely relevant to today's strata.

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Jonah Smith's Search for a Musical Identity

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"Roots music" is a term bandied about far too loosely of late. Defined by Webster as "any music identified with an early culture," roots music has become a catchphrase to describe what is far too often mediocre music disguised as a tribute to the origins of a genre, be it blues, jazz, country or even heavy metal. Hence, the very term is rendered impotent. Eric Clapton is not roots music. Robert Johnson is.

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The PR surrounding Jonah Smith is fond of referring to him as a throwback (which he is) and then taking it one step further and calling him roots music (which he most definitely is not) unless seventies-grounded blue-eyed soul sprang full-blown from some hitherto unknown source. Nonetheless, it is the rock/jazz music of the early seventies that are the root of Smith's music.

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On his eponymously titled major label debut, Jonah Smith attempts to rejuvenate the soul/jazz/rock hybrid genre, as exemplified by bands like Little Feat and Steely Dan, that the too cool for school collegiate clique dug on in the early to mid-seventies. The resultant album, however, offers little in the way of innovation. Rather, it more often than not comes across as a pale imitation of the music that it seeks to exalt. That's not to say that Jonah Smith is a bad work, but only that its potential is unrealized. Smith can't seem to decide whether he wants to be Van Morrison or Steve Winwood and the album reflects that uncertainty.

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Perhaps it's a case of first album jitters, but throughout the album, one is left with a sense that Smith is out of his element. The band is tight and Smith's vocals ring with conviction, but the work ultimately is best left to club venues. It's mildly entertaining but it sounds like a really cool cover band whose originals sound all too familiar.

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While Jonah Smith makes a valiant freshman effort, one can only hope that he cements his own identity on his next outing.

Dave Chappelle's Block Party:

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This Ain't No Disco

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Part documentary, part satire, part road trip, part concert film, Dave Chappelle's Block Party is ultimately a film about the unlikely commonalities that are at the heart of America. Directed by Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), Block Party ostensibly chronicles Chappelle's quest to throw the ultimate block party. The resultant film is a resonant, albeit somewhat disjointed, look at how the heartland and the 'hood, regardless of how both ends of the spectrum would deny it, speak with the same unconscious, but universal voice.

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Block Party opens in Chappelle's rural Yellow Springs, Ohio (pop.4500) hometown, but it's anything but a celebrity homecoming. Rather, the movie goes to great lengths to depict the town's inhabitants, and Chappelle himself, as representative of the American Heartland. From the outset, though, the understated sarcasm that is part and parcel of his brand of humor becomes the underlying thread that weaves through the entire film. Chappelle's ulterior motive is to load the citizenry on a bus to Brooklyn for the "ultimate block party." It's a motley crew who signs on for the trip, from the woman who sells him cigarettes at the corner store, to the town's two probation officers (one white, one black, neither known for soul), to the entire Central State University Marching Band.

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Chappelle doesn't disappoint them--or the viewing audience, for that matter. While Block Party is billed as a concert film, it works on a number of levels, not the least of which is social commentary. The characters that populate the film are real people, the kind of Americans who may have slipped through the cracks of mainstream society but have built a reality for themselves. Take, for instance the owners of the Broken Angel House, which serves as a backdrop for the block party. At first glance, they seem like the oldest surviving acid casualties in the world--which they probably are-- but between Gondry's direction and Chappelle's conversational interview techniques, they ultimately come across as a lovely couple whose marriage has endured over forty years.

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All that notwithstanding, Block Party shines as a concert film unlike any before it. Perhaps it is

because Gondry is French and sees hip-hop culture from a distanced perspective or perhaps it is because Chappelle is from the Heartland and romanticizes Brooklyn as a mythical land, the finished product is dazzling in its sheer exuberance. There simply is not one bad performance in the concert--not surprising since the roster includes Kanye West, Erikah Badu, the Roots and Mos Def, not to mention the finally reunited Fugees, fronted by Lauryn Hill and Wyclef Jean.

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Block Party may not be one of the great concert films by iconoclastic standards, but like Woodstock, it presents to the social mainstream a musical and cultural idiom that shows no sign of retreating. Nor should it. Rap, when done right, is nothing short of street poetry. The musicians, such as Dead Prez and Common, represented on Block Party bring that point home forcefully, and Jill Scott, Erikah Badu and the Fugees eloquently delineate the intricacies of hip-hop.

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The DVD unrated edition of Block Party offers extended (read that full) performances of the acts in the concert, as well as the obligatory "making of" featurette. While that is often interesting, the "Ohio Players" featurette, about the people from Ohio and their impressions of Brooklyn, stands alone as entertainment in a home video meets Comedy Central kind of way.

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All in all, Dave Chappelle's Block Party is a must-have for anybody with more than a passing interest in popular culture, and a "you really gotta see it" for everybody else.

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Bakithi Kumalo:

Transmigration.

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If the drum is the lifeblood of all music, then the bass is its pulse. You don't just hear the bass so much as you feel it--it courses through you on a visceral level and guides you through the more obvious melody. In the hands of a master, such as Stanley Clarke or Jaco Pastorius, the bass is a musical force with no peer. On Transmigration, Bukithi Kumalo proves himself to be such a master.

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While Transmigration is his third album, Kumalo is probably best known to American audiences for his work on Paul Simon's world beat-driven Graceland, where his swirling bass playfully danced with Simon's alliterative lyrics to help create one of the first commercially successful "world beat" albums. It's safe to say, I think, that Kumalo's work there has helped to establish much of Simon's signature sound since.

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On his previous solo efforts (San' Bonan and In Front of My Eyes), South African native Kumalo focused his efforts on the African textures that are his roots. With the aptly titled Transmigration, however, he draws on those roots, fleshes them out and gives them truly international wings. As a journey of the soul, as its title loosely implies it is, Transmigration is a tour de force of musical idioms united by the commonality of jazz and a determination to return to its wellspring.

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The journey that is Transmigration begins in the decidedly urban landscape of "Twilight Fire" and ends, appropriately enough, with the haunting "Africa". It's the stops along the way, though, that make the album a fully realized excursion. And throughout it all, Kumalo's bass effortlessly guides us through the various landscapes, speaking to us in a commanding way not heard since Stanley Clarke's heyday. Kumalo's thumb-slapping style lends itself naturally to pieces like "Looking Forward", sliding smoothly from the percussive lead of the bass to the complimentary keyboards and back again, as he does similarly on the sax-infused "Step by Step." And on the one vocal number, the R&B influenced "Only Your Love", his bass serves as an almost erotic counterpoint to former Chaka Khan background singer Penny Ford's vocals.

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Kumalo is by no means a dilletante, however. While he is one of the very few bassists capable of elevating the instrument to the status of lead--which he does formidably on several tracks here-- he also recognizes the value inherent in the traditional role of the bass in jazz. In "Trio", he eschews his electric bass in favor of an upright accoustic and commandingly complements Bill Smith's piano and Damon Duewhite's drums. It's a song that both plays tribute to the fifties roots of progressive jazz and stands alone as an evolution of the genre.

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But it is "Africa" that stands as the true tribute to the roots of jazz and indeed, all music. It is not only the finale but the centerpiece of Transmigration. A solo effort in which Kumalo plays wood flute, guitar, bass, drum, as well as delivering a haunting vocal chant, "Africa" takes us to that primal well from which all music evolved. It is in that haunting simplicity that we first found our voice and it is in that same simplicity that we evolve.

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What Bakithi Kumalo has done with Transmigration is taken us on a flashback exodus from the current state of urban jazz to the very roots from whence it arose. He, along with producer and sometime collaborator Chris Pati, has lifted jazz from its stagnant state of the last decade and returned it to its rightful position of grace. While we're only six years into it, Transmigration may very well be the most important jazz album of the 21st century thus far.

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The Canvas:

A Mosaic of Pastel Cool

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It's another unforgivingly hot and humid day in Dallas, made all the worse by mid-week traffic snarl and workaday frayed nerves, compounded all the more by the nervous energy that is pursuant to what passes as a weekend. It's a reality that we'd rather not be a party to.

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Anyway, that's the world outside my window.

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In this little corner of what passes as my office, though, it's cool and a little smoky, in a Cafe Americain sort of way. I'm relaxing with a glass of red wine and drifting into another time, another place, reminiscent of a Parisian jazz cafe in the thirties or a tucked-away fifties cool jazz joint in New York. And I'm listening to the debut album by the Canvas, simply titled Random Thoughts.

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On a casual first listen, it would be easy to dismiss the Canvas as pleasant background music of the sort one might find in an edgier-than-thou restaurant. And in certain regards, that would be true. This is not an album that screams to be noticed--no histrionic guitar solos, no bass runs that meander forever, no in-your face drum work. Rather, this is a work full of subtle nuances made by a trio of musicians working as a cohesive unit.

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To be sure, Random Thoughts is an unassuming work, and it is that very aspect that makes it so engaging. The trio that comprise the Canvas--Shahin (guitar), Casper (bass) and Brett (drums)--are enamored not with fame, but with the joy of playing music. They don't even use their last names.

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And play music they do-- building on a basic jazz groove, and evoking at various points, elements of funk, ragas and blues--all coming together in a sound that can only be described as universal. It's not what one would expect to come out of Arlington, Virginia, but then again, Liverpool was an unlikely music hotbed at one time.

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It has always been my practice not to review an album before at least three listens--the catchy hook wears thin by then. It's the albums that offer something new on each listen-- that something you didn't hear before-- that catch my attention.

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I'm on my seventh listen on this one, with no signs of putting it away.

Blogcritics.org

Bush versus....Batwoman?!?

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An already beleagered Bush Administration was delivered what some are already calling a "potentially devastating" setback when Batwoman announced this weekend that she is a "lipstick lesbian." Her announcement could not have come at a worse time for the President, who is promoting a Constitutional Amendment banning gay marriage.

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While some neocon pundits dismissed Batwoman's self-outing as another ploy by liberals to undermine "traditional family values," White House insiders admitted that her confession further undermines Bush's efforts to regain the public's confidence. With polls indicating that voters' biggest concerns are the Administration's handling of the war in Iraq, rising energy costs and the ongoing debate on illegal immigration, many view Bush's sudden rush to ban gay marriage as a diversionary election year tactic.

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The President made no mention of Batwoman in his speech to the faithful today, which most on both sides of the gay marriage issue agreed was his best tactic in the face of Batwoman's popularity. At 5'10, and closer to 6'2 in those spike heels, she has been the subject of speculation and a tabloid favorite in a record short time, eclipsing even Britney Spears. Unlike Batman, who has not been heard from in the past few months, Batwoman does not shirk from publicity. In fact, recent polls indicate she may be more popular than the President.

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Mr. Bush chose instead to gear his speech to a faction that claims to have elected him--the Religious Right. While he made a valiant attempt to boost the theory that marriage is between a man and a woman only, he failed to address civil issues that confront all couples, regardless of their orientation. His arguments, therefore, fell on largely deaf ears.

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Batwoman's unabashed admission only made the Administration's position weaker in many circles. It's long been known that superheroes are among the most diverse groups in America, and her coming out of the closet only cements that notion. The so-called "Bat Family," while dysfunctional and the subject of lurid gossip for decades now, has nonetheless always connected with the American psyche by doing what they set out to do.

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If it's all PR, the President would be well advised to learn from it.