All posts by Chris Toenes
Chris Toenes ·
26 Feb 2010, 6:28 PM ·
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Mapfumo
Cold as it was last night, walking into Duke Coffeehouse’s transcendental dance vibe was wholly warming. The room filled up to a comfortable crowd, and as Mapfumo, “The Lion of Zimbabwe,” led his band in songs both traditional and fused with the funky, dancing spread from person to person like fever.
The Blacks Unlimited, Mapfumo’s current band, appeared onstage as an electric outfit, not unlike a funk band outfitted with twelve-string bass, guitars, keyboards and a Western drum kit. But a set of congas stood to one side, and buried behind the group’s front line, a sole mbira player sat. The mbira is a handmade thumb piano encased in a semi-circular wooden shell, and Shona mbira music is a cornerstone of Zimbabwean music and Mapfumo’s Chimurenga pop. It provides the beautiful undulating tones behind this band’s rhythmic base, and last night, the band’s sound was tight as they moved through those tones. Continue reading »
Live Actions: Reviews Duke Performances, Thomas Mapfumo
Chris Toenes ·
19 Feb 2010, 5:24 PM ·
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Dean and Britta, always a pleasure
Dean and Britta
Thursday, Feb. 18, 2010
Duke University, Durham
It could have ended up just another lesson in how the visual cannot be married to the musical easily, or vice versa. But there Dean and Britta were, with band members Lee Waters and Matt Sumrow, delicately balancing the two and winning. The project was offered to Wareham by the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, and initially I thought, surely that offer was based on his experience with dreamy, atmospheric pop that might lend itself well to Warhol’s voluptuously slowed down film shorts.
Wareham has experience putting music to film: Dean and Britta contributed to The Squid and the Whale’s score, and Luna had songs in films before that. With a monstrous screen behind them, allowing the films to take appropriate visual dominance over any stage show, the band started into the set carefully, with Waters out on bass.
Then the tone was set: Wareham or Phillips gave a blip of background information, usually with a telling slice of life, for each of the 13 chosen film subjects. It made for an entirely different experience than an open viewing of these strong characters in Warhol’s circle, turning their non-performance performances into something much more revealing. So, while the Luna song “Teenage Lightning” was used for Paul America, and a Nico song, “I’ll Keep it with Mine,” was used for hers, some of the most effective combinations were less obvious. Continue reading »
Live Actions: Reviews Dean and Britta, Duke Performances, Lee Waters, Matt Sumrow
Chris Toenes ·
17 Feb 2010, 5:53 PM ·
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Oakland-based DJ Ripley comes from the branch of digital investigators like Wayne Marshall doing as much research on beats, ethnomusicology, or copyright as they are with their mixing skills.
So, it’s natural she would be here for the C.H.A.T. festival, hosted by UNC’s Institute for the Arts and Humanities this week. As the organizers put it, “CHAT will draw together the diverse digital resources of the Triangle area in a series of performances, discussions, exhibitions and workshops to showcase Collaborations: Humanities, Arts & Technology.”
As part of The Art and Culture of the DJ section of the fest, along with sociologist and hip-hop scholar Oliver Wang, Ripley will talk and jam the tunes on Friday.
Among the panels and discussions that started yesterday and run through Saturday, music comes up in bleeps of talk about fair use and other topics, and in blasts of plain old floor-smashing rhythmic bliss.
Local steadfast folks Yugen, One Duran, along with WXYC music director Montgomery Morris, fill out the roster for Fuse.
In fact, tune into XYC tonight at 9 p.m. for the winning entries in the Locally Produced Digital Music Showcase, a contest curated by WXYC, in partnership with the festival.
Pop over to some of the events during the festival, then drop in to Fuse for the bass in yer face.
You Should Do This DJ Ripley
Chris Toenes ·
22 Jan 2010, 12:14 PM ·
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Beach music and the Carolina Shag dance phenom still carry a lot of weight in North Carolina. It was evidenced when Secretary of State Elaine Marshall, an avid shag dancer, established Beach Music Day in 2004, coinciding with a concert celebration in Downtown Raleigh.
Now, UNC Women’s Basketball coach Sylvia Hatchell has invited shaggers to perform their footwork in front of the halftime crowd in Friday’s game against Clemson.
Hatchell is a member of the Eno Shag Club, and an old friend of beach & oldies DJ Charlie Brown, one of the primary voices for the scene from the mid-60s in Raleigh, now on WPCM 920 AM in Burlington, and in syndication “On the Beach with Charlie Brown.”
So, this Friday at halftime in the newly-renovated Carmichael arena, dancers from Burlington, Eno, Bass Lake, and Chatham shag clubs will perform an exhibition. Look for some junior shaggers, too, some vying for national level competition. Continue reading »
News flashes, You Should Do This
Chris Toenes ·
6 Nov 2009, 6:43 PM ·
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When last night’s show first started, David Yow, the Jesus Lizard’s elemental front man (”singer” just doesn’t get to it,) made an early impression on one of my friends—a palm print. Yow gallivanted his way across the forest of young punk dudes and oldsters trying to get a lift, stepped up to him and slapped him straight in the face. As the guy was telling me the story, he raised his eyebrows, smiled a little, and said, “Hard.” Another friend was set adrift in “the pit,” a term destined for sounding corny these days, but there it is. Distracted in a moment when he was helping suspend Yow mid-air by supporting his tailbone, he got clocked and lost his glasses.
Thing is, last night’s The Jesus Lizard set at Cat’s Cradle was hardly a place where negativity held any sway with people. It was fucking joyous. You could not turn your head without seeing someone grinning like they were gonna soil their pants. People who didn’t know each other pulled each other up from the floor. Yow checked out every inch of the place, hanging from a fan one song, off to check the stability of some wooden staging boards the next. The band—Duane Denison, David Wm. Sims, and Mac McNeill—surged and jabbed like boxers. McNeilly pulled one of those anomalies you only see occasionally, a drum solo as brutal as their set in pace and pummeling heaviness. Denison and Sims blasted on guitar and bass what bordered on the best industrial clatter (certainly The Birthday Party is in there, always).
All this is what makes the combo of their sound and Yow’s ring-leading such a physical thing: They beat everyone up. Metal schmetal. Last night it was hard not to get punch-drunk. Skulking around like he knew no other place but that room, Yow coaxed the lot along, feeding beer to the diehards down front, twitching himself around in inhuman contortions. Continue reading »
Live Actions: Reviews Cat's Cradle, The Jesus Lizard
Chris Toenes ·
29 Sep 2009, 4:05 PM ·
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Mingus Big Band and Sun Ra Arkestra
Page Auditorium, Duke University, Durham
Saturday, Sept. 26
Wild horses were not obstacles getting into Page Auditorium, but they were about the only things missing: Duke University’s homecoming football game had a kickoff time matching the start of a double bill with the Sun Ra Arkestra and the Mingus Big Band, so West Campus looked like some mad maze teeming with cars and pedestrians in every direction. M.C. Escher would have been proud. Of course, there was the rain, too. My fellow travelers and I determined that the reason the traffic cop directed the lane across from us endlessly, without giving us equal time, must have been a hatred of jazz. Too bad for him… Continue reading »
Live Actions: Reviews Charles Mingus, Duke Performances, Sun Ra
Chris Toenes ·
25 Sep 2009, 4:03 PM ·
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Like most college radio stations, WXDU 88.7 FM holds events to shore up its reserves. For the last four years, they’ve put together a group of record dealers with a dual mission: getting collectors and fans together over a bevy of that exhilarating black wax and raising some money through some of their own sales. This year promises to be one of the best yet, with tons of records and, well, that other blackened platter in play: the burger.
But don’t just take our word for it: Continue reading »
News flashes, You Should Do This WXDU
Chris Toenes ·
25 Aug 2009, 11:03 AM ·
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- Rock heir.
Parents, teachers, young music listeners, listen up: Jessica Hopper, author of The Girls’ Guide to Rocking, is reading at Nightlight in Chapel Hill tonigh, August 25. The show also includes two rad young female artists Katie Stelmanis and Ghost Bees and Durham female band Pink Flag. It’s all ages, costs $5 and starts at 7 p.m.
Jessica Hopper repped punk bands, played in a few and has written a lot—in her own zine, Hit It or Quit It, and all over the place. She notably became a voice for women in modern punk circles in an article for Punk Planet, “Emo: Where the Girls Aren’t,” later anthologized in Da Capo’s Best Music Writing 2004. Her work has appeared in two subsequent editions.
The Indy talked with her recently as she embarked on a tour headed this way. Continue reading »
Interviews and Long Cuts, You Should Do This Jessica Hopper, Nightlight
Chris Toenes ·
6 Aug 2009, 4:56 PM ·
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Record label Light in the Attic will soon add to the in-print catalog of Durham-born funk diva Betty Davis this fall with the release of Is It Love or Desire?, her last studio album, which was canned before release and hasn’t even been bootlegged. The album was recorded in Louisiana with Funk House, Davis’ backing band with deep roots in the Reidsville and Greensboro areas. It included her cousins, drummer Nicky Neal and bassist Larry Johnson, and their friends, Fred “Funki” Mills and guitarist Carlos Morales. For those who heard it at the time, the record was a breakthrough for the band and a new direction for Davis. Nasty Gal, her third album, will also receive reissue with extensive notes from researcher John Ballon and other rich detail. It’s another overt, raunchy stab outward from Davis. Originally released in 1975, it includes an arrangement by Miles Davis of “You and I,” in which she wrote and sang of their relationship. October 6 can’t come fast enough for some of us. Stay tuned.
Fred “Funki” Mills will host a benefit in honor of his sister, Janice L. Mills, at N.C Central Saturday at 7:30 p.m. Mills was the dean of N.C. Central University’s law school before her death in 2007. For more on that, jump beyond the break for our 8 Days a Week selection on the concert. Continue reading »
New Music, News flashes Betty Davis, Fred Mills
Chris Toenes ·
12 Jun 2009, 11:49 PM ·
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Da Bears.
Grizzly Bear
Thursday, June 11
Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro
Grizzly Bear didn’t need to convince anyone of its charms at a sold-out Cat’s Cradle last night: Many onlookers wore broad grins when the lights dropped, and the crowd at large welcomed the band to the stage warmly. The quartet gauged the vibe. Singer Ed Droste lauded his first taste of local Locopops. And off they went… Continue reading »
Live Actions: Reviews Cat's Cradle, Grizzly Bear
