I have been listening to a great deal of soul, and I find that very strange indeed, because I did not care much for soul when I was first introduced to it. The thing is that the kid who turned me onto soul was a preacher's kid, and he sat in the back of Algebra class, and he was rude and crass and also immensely appealing as a Charon into real life, although that was mostly not because of the positively quadratic porn that the teacher took away from him one day.
When he was not spitting his four removable teeth at his close friend, who sat unfortunately on my other side and therefore slightly out of reach of the mouth-flung teeth and the spittle that inevitably followed and preceded them, he would sometimes hold forth on things he liked. One of these things was, in fact, funk.
He explained to me that what I needed to was listen to more Earth Wind & Fire. And so I bought the best of Earth Wind, & Fire when I got a gift certificate to Peaches Records & Tapes, which was way the heck out on Broad Street in what is probably now the inner city of Richmond. (Ampersands were all the rage. It was 1979.)
I listened. And I thought perhaps I had bought the wrong record. It was unimaginable that this would be the Great Music he was talking about all the time. (Now, mind you, I am now listening to a singularly and intentionally filthy and numbskull single by a BAND called Peaches titled "**** the Pain Away." So my standards have rather fallen.)
Now, today, I have been listening again, thanks to the 1000 recordings book. Nor have I settled in Earth Wind & Fire, or taken refuge in Ray Charles and refused to come out. I have listened to Erykah Badu, which is possibly the finest soul I have heard made since 1980 (Michael Jackson set aside for study purposes), and Ruth Brown, and Aretha, lord, Aretha, who still takes paint right off the computer where it was baked on by little elves somewhere. The Jackson Five, and The Supremes, and Etta James, the greatest underrated singer the world has ever known. Les Nubians. Did everyone know about Les Nubians but me? Could someone, perhaps, get for me a witness? OK, straight up, I hear that it's an uneven record, but when they hit, wow. And War, and Minnie Riperton.
I have cut through a deep stretch of meadow and it is flat magnificent to reconnect with this tradition. What a pleasure, what a delight, what a deep rich history, so brief and so textured.
Then I lucked into a field trip!
I happened to click on a new release on my music subscription provider, and was delivered to some fascinating work, what's now called "blue-eyed soul," and which I think should simply be called "soul," as I believe that funk sees no color. Or, perhaps, it would be better to say that funk sees every color, all the time, all day long and all night. In any event, Nikki Costa is deeply, and effectively, informed by all the stripes of funk and soul and R&B that I have been listening to for weeks. She is young -- so young! -- and on her third record. I went to a mall to hear her, at a mall in the chilly hinterlands of Foxborough, a mall in the development around the gargantuan stadium where the Pats play, where they served bourbon in plastic cups. (Be careful ordering bourbon in the North: The nice bartender lady tried to bring me Southern Comfort. I nearly struck the bottle from her hand.)
Costa was tight, sharp, and generously fierce. She brought seven musicians -- seven! -- and when they weren't enough she sat down and played drums herself while the regular drummer worked harder still. The trombone player, lord have mercy, she played like Hades in a test tube. It's one of those things where you say, hey, I bet all the trombone players would like to play like that, and then she hit about the third solo of the night, and she about threw out her elbow swinging, and it sounded fantastic, this foot-stomping, hammer-and-tongs trombone, the kind of thing that they DID NOT TEACH IN MARCHING BAND. We are talking here about a transformative tromboning strategy.
I was delighted. We are ALL delighted. The musicians -- did I say there were seven? seven musicians IN A MALL STOREFRONT? -- the musicians were universally smash tight, and Costa herself was on, mugging and grinding and shouting and howling down into a sparse front without nearly enough people in it, and I swear, it was first class. She had control; she had the willingness to climb way out on the limb and try to break it, she hit her squeals right where she aimed them. She rocked back and forth, and giggled, and she pumped up her people and brought out their best. She was a consummate, as they say, show woman, mostly in her own material but also in a fine if blurry cover of The White Stripes' "The Denial Twist" (at least that's where I know it from).
The biggest joy, though, without question, was to hear Etta, and Janis, and all of them, tearing into it with such heart, coming out her mouth like a skull out a zombie. (Hmm, perhaps not the very best analogy available. It's a long post. Why are you still reading it?) What luck live music is. No performance can really be in the 1000 -- not until it's over. But it's always, always worth going on a field trip.
