scene rpt., sparkle hands

TV on the Radio (or TiVO, as they are sometimes known ’round these plasmatic wilds) opening for PFunk in the Opera House at Brooklyn Academy of Music, were aglow. They have four very long hits whose climax relies on percussive breakdowns and they played each one, accompanied by four-person brass section and 90 Day Men’s Rob Lowe (ex-Biz 3) on korgs. Guitarist/producer David Sitek did not engage in his normal 10-minute long beatboxing outro, sadly, but the opera-grade sound system and the lamby bleat of horns obscured any of their traditionally off-key vocalizing, god love em anyway, whatevx — they kept the good parts going like Funkmaster Flex. Begun with production and vocals and bloomed out to full-band with fuck-ups, and wracked with the kinda turmoil that makes Tunde’s hand twitch heavenward. This is why we like them: they are ordinary extraordinary. I wish they were the kind of band that hands out drumsticks and lets audience members go to town on the high-hat. I would’ve brought my own tambourine and bumrushed the stage: “yes! we all relate to your pain! each one teach one, dogggeeees!”
Some of my high-art connex up in the mezz, were mad at TVOTR’s lack of proper chordal modalities or some classical composition shit. But that’s what happens when you spend your free time reading books like Dynamics of Post-Tonal Theory, and what happens when our boys end up exposed to a (theoretically) higher-art context. But I definitely like to see the kids getting paid. Also, the last band I saw with a full horn section was Prince & the NPG, on the 2002 “let’s hump all nite” tour or whatever.
PFunk was a two-hour long magical misery tour. How is it that a 237-person funk band — including a hula-hooping contortionist, a guitarist wearing a diaper, George Clinton and a dude playing a Chapman Stick — could possibly be rote and uninteresting? But it was; by now, everyone knows the script: immortal funk = wacky timez!, an unfortunate go-ahead for ladies to drag out the hot-pink feather boas from Halloween. Not to mention a bevy of stoned brahs in tie-dyes who seemed to be getting bizzz-ayyy, but were, in actuality, haywire like C3P0 sans torso. It hit my tortured cohort PFUNKamanica hard — I thought he was going to stab the free-survey pencil into his own eye — but I just directed my brain inward and absorbed whatever classic basslines they got around to playing; that is, after the first two and a half hours of ill jam sesh. (i.e., opening song consisted entirely of solos and was 35 minutes long, G. Clinton didn’t come out til 2008, some people rapped about herb, etc. I am now .038% deafer.)
also, at dinner, we sat near to yr boy.
also, if your idols think of women as stewardesses, that idea is bound to sink in to yr own brain on some level, no matter how spitshined your brain’s iron hatch of theory may be.
also, i still prefer the slow, vibrato’d version of “Staring at the Sun,” when Tunde sings with himself in full-spectrum redemption, a solitary but wholly actualized meditation on death and, I think, hope* — “note the trees because the dirt is temporary.” The song has more impact when it’s ginger, with space to breathe.
Please feel free to metaphorize any of the above statements however they may suit your best and worst needs. “Staring at the Sun” on repeat, got me feeling flexible.
*yes, even if the song is about Camus–spend some time with de Beauvoir and you’ll feel better