By: Jon Behm
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Brazzaville - Photo by Jon Behm
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Things didn’t exactly get a lot better when the music started playing. White Jazz, while white, were not particularly jazzy. I will chalk this up to two of the band members being extremely under the weather though. They did play a few toe-tappers, but I think that they would sound a lot better with a healthy lead singer. I couldn’t find any information about the band, and think that this may have been their first real gig.
A fresh beer in my hand, a little music in my blood, I started feeling a bit rejuvenated by the time Big Trouble took the stage. Unfortunately, recently dried tears of sadness were shortly thereafter replaced with tears of boredom. The members of Big Trouble are all excellent musicians—this much was obvious. This didn’t necessarily translate into a good stage show however, unless you your thing is just watching really technically skilled musicians play, regardless of what they sound like. What Big Trouble play is classic rock influenced instrumentals—the kind of jazz rock that is produced these days mostly by dozens and dozens of “legendary” guitarists who are now in their 50s. In fact, there is probably a group of them in your hometown who would be surprised that you never heard about the studio work that they did once with Walter Becker back in the early ‘80s.
Big Trouble does appear to have a great time playing though, and they riff off of each others’ chords like a group of old session musicians. While they sound nice, it is the sort of sound that I generally associate with being on hold. If I am being unusually harsh, truth is I am writing this review on a Monday morning. When they started getting into instrumental U2 covers though, I had to step out into the frosty St. Paul air to wake myself up.
The next band to take the stage was Body Language/Togetherness, yet another band that I could find almost zero reliable information about. They further enhanced their mystery by opening the set with an a capella rendition of “Castle on a Cloud,” from Les Miserables. This was sung alone by a girl who left the stage shortly thereafter, and did not appear to actually be part of the band. Strangeness aside, BL/T rocked my socks off. They piped electro beats through a laptop and played a sort of rock-funk over them. The male guitarist (judging by the band’s Myspace page he could be either “The Tickler,” “Sneaky Fingersss” or “Peperoni Penus”) was quite good. He was technically skilled and not afraid to break out in some freaky jams. This was complemented by very good vocals by the three ladies: a guitarist, bassist and keyboardist. The band had a lot of sass, and not only woke me up; I think they woke up the whole block.
At around 1:00 in the morning, the band I was waiting for finally made their way to the stage to close out the night. Brazzaville is mixture of musicians from Barcelona and Milwaukee who follow the lead of singer David Brown, a dapper mustachioed baritone. Though I have only heard of them recently, I was greatly looking forward to the show based on what I had heard. The band plays a fusion of a lot of styles—there is definitely a large helping of Bossa Nova, a little Eastern European folk, as well as a hint of Spanish Flamenco, amongst other things. Brown has done a lot of globetrotting and the various influences he has picked up show a great deal. According to what I have been able to research, he was traveling the world playing saxophone with Beck when he first learned to play the guitar from the maestro Smokey Hormel. He is now a skilled classical guitarist, and plays primarily on a beat up looking acoustic. Brown’s voice is a deep croon, and at times he sounds a bit like Stephin Merritt would if he attempted covering old Astrud Gilberto songs. The lyrics too are generally dark tales of travel and heartbreak.
Brown himself is pretty upbeat though—he taught us the words to a few of his choruses, most notably “Jesse James,” and he kept urging us to sing along. When he caught me in the act of not singing, he grinned down at me and said, “C’mon, you can do it.” I was then forced to self-consciously mumble out a few choruses—there is a reason people like myself write critiques about music—we generally can’t hold a damn tune ourselves.
Singing along aside, I absolutely loved the show. After attending so many rock shows in a row, it was nice to find a band that has a sound that is like nothing else out there I know of. Though it might be typified as “world music,” I think it belongs in that uncategorizable genre along with bands like Man Man and Beirut. The show was one the best I have seen recently, and I think I just may have a new favorite band on my hands. I was grinning uncontrollably during the whole drive home, which is generally a pretty good indicator.
If you haven’t already done so, check out Brazzaville. While the tunes on their MySpace page don’t do them justice, that is as good a place as any to start.
Location Info:
The Turf Club
Artist Info: Big Trouble, Body Language/Togetherness, Brazzaville, White Jazz
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