Last Tuesday

Lots of nightlife as well as daylife to catch up on - so far we go out during the week more than the weekend.. This is a recap of last Tuesday

Courtesy of a circular set of connections (New York, SF, Jamaica, Vienna all intertwined through a few people) I ended up being invited to the Tuesday Night Live party at the Village Cafe in Ligaunea

We rolled up after having waited unsuccessfully for our team-mate the mighty wayneandwax to arrive. His flights all delayed too much to hop on (no connections can be made tonight), he spent a lovely day in Logan airport and plans to try again on Wednesday. We take a taxi out to the party to drown our sorrows, leaving unfashionably early at 10:30pm, but we hear that Lady Saw is going to be shooting some of her video there and we don't want to miss anything.

It's rooftop club, partially enclosed, and part open to the sky. Going upstairs to the entrance, you look right and see the open porch, lined with folks, especially rastas with guitars. Looking left is the sound engineer and the dj (playing Virtual DJ off a laptop), and then downstairs (but still semi-open) was a bar. A nice laidback vibe, not too glitzy, more rootsy. Crowd was definitely older than Quad, more Chinese and white folks around, seemingly a bit more upper class overall, as far as I can tell.

It was "ladies' night" with a female dj and female-fronted or all-female acts. First was Mosharee, who did some spoken word – quite confident, good stage presence, commanding attention and reaching for a kind of "weave-a-spell-with-words" approach. I kept being distracted by the fact that her face and body language reminded me of LL Cool J (without all that lip-licking).

Next was L &S who were a two-sister team who wrote their own songs, one on guitar and one on keyboards. They were pretty good, like the top of a high school talent show, with some clever musical turns and clever lyrics. Absolutely not my kind of music, but it was entertaining for a while, to watch how they were putting together a pop act. They had matching outfits of black pencil skirts and red halter tops, but one (the keyboardist) was extremely thin except for her chest, with a dramatic face – huge eyes, wide mouth, small chin; while the other was much curvier in the body and less dramatic features. At first, I thought the first one had a better voice – it was louder and more in tune, although rather thin and piercing. The second one's voice seemed a bit weaker and huskier overall, but then there was one song where she dropped it lower, and it became clear that she had a pretty powerful voice, but she was forcing it up high to be the harmony for her sister. It made me thinking about the girl-girl dynamics, especially because the one that (at least in the US) would be "the pretty one" was clearly dominant, to the point of moving her sister physically to where she wanted her to be a couple times, dragging her across the stage by the hand at one point. They had some interesting vocal harmonies going on, but I kept wishing the other sister would just blow the first one off the stage. Also, something about the girl-group style made me wonder if there was a svengali somewhere. There was clearly tons of practicing in their past, and also a lot of control over their image and their relationship.

Next was a tremendous singer, I think her name is Alison, she only did two or three songs but she ruled it. The only problem was her mic was up too high – her voice was so huge it was overpowering the system and clipping. But she had great presence, slightly aggressive, but humorous as well, not too hammy, but also in control of the stage. She wore a simple dress that wasn't too glam, longsleeves and a short skirt in a sort of military style, and black leather boots. Hair down, not a lot of makeup. But she opened her mouth and wham! Hugeness.
Her backup band was a crew of high school kids from the music school (Edna Manley?) who were all pretty great. Not a ton of stage presence from them yet, but clearly focused on music and loving playing, which was nice to see. One of the guitarists looked about 12, but he came up with some soulful stuff.

One of the women who sang backup on Alison's last tune came back (with the same band) to sing some solo tunes. Sabrina Ward had a more rootsy look and vibe – shaven head, tall and elegant, big round earrings, a long skirt in green and an orange and red top made out of a big swathe of silky fabric tied around her with the ends in the front (my fellow intern said it looked like she was wearing a goldfish butt). She had a nice deep throaty voice that was a lot less trained than Alison's but conveyed good emotion, and she seemed pretty sincere and thoughtful.

Then there was a break, while the main backup band stepped up. Mostly rastas, including a white rasta (big beard and tam) dude on solo guitar, and a rhythm guitarist who looked like a young Jackie Mittoo a bit, or like one of the handsome basketball players I remember from my youth (late 1970s). The bass player was wearing a sports jersey and white trousers and some fabulous colorful patent leather sneakers. The keyboard player had a purple vest over his white outfit, it had outlines of Africa on it. They set up some sound, lay down some rhythm, sang a number together, and then surprise surprise, Prince Al-Lah stepped out from the late 1970s! This is when the crowd started to get really lively. He was pretty elderly, and pretty happy. My favorite thing was when he suggested that one song he sang (from 1976), killed the pope. All in a kindly smiling voice, he said "when I first play this in 1976, three days later the pope dead!"

Next up was the official headliner, Empress. Whew. Well first I should say, she is incredibly polished, great performer, very skilful, good voice, well-put-together tunes. However, and maybe I'm prejudiced by the article I read that talked about her spending age 12-20s in Australia, and how she talked about herself there, but I found her kinda phony. Everything was so extremely self-consciously "I AM JAMAICAN." There was a song about how great a rastaman boyfriend is, all the good sex and all that righteousness. That doesn't rule out the rent-a-dread, it seems to me, or rather, echoes some middleclass tourist women's talk. Then there was a song that started out "raise your fist if you think Jamaica is a Paradise." My fellow intern and and I just looked at each other. I mean, there are many wonderful things and people in Jamaica. But what do you leave out with a statement like that? Who is your audience?

At this point I was basically holding out for Lady Saw. I know she was only going to sing one song – since she was filming her video. But I just wanted to see her in action. Of course, she had been in action all night – she and Cecile were glamming it up in the front row, sort of holding court, projecting star energy, in nearly identical little black dresses, with sparkling jewelry at the neck and high heels. Lady Saw's makeup artist, a younger woman with a lot of elaborate makeup, kept hovering around and reapplying Lady Saw's lipgloss with a brush as she (Lady Saw) perched on a stool in the crowd. Later in the night, her two backup dancers showed up and stood around in the crowd in hotpants, black fedoras with long ponytails of braids, and black longsleeve tops with strategic windows or slashes in them. Actually they looked rather styley, although from the waist down they were rather teenage-slumber-party-in-high heels (the hotpants really did look like boy shorts underwear and the ladies were on the hipless side). The crowd was also livened up by Wayne Marshall (the reggae one, not our friend from Boston) lurking around in his camouflage taking pictures of the show.

But it was all worth the wait because Lady Saw just busted out on the mic and blew everyone away. Her song for the video was the only dancehall vibe of the night, and she was repeating bits of the chorus so the video folks could shoot. But it was still awesome. And then, as a special treat for the crowd, she belted out an a capella song about not being born beautiful but getting along just fine. Simple lyrics, somehow really affecting. Plus, it worked with her voice, which wasn't as naturally powerful and beautiful as some of the other singers that night, but clearly showed she had worked on it 10,000 times as hard as anyone else, and that she was experienced in making the most of it. Sometimes that's more satisfying than a natural gift used boringly.

Pretty soon after that we left, having to get into the office bright and early next morning.