Tuesday, January 28, 2003

Smart, Scary Stuff From Daniel Ellsberg My colleague Peter Scholtes just sent me this. http://www.ellsberg.net/weblog/1_27_03.htm 1:32:45 PM    comment []

Blinded by Alabaster: Pigskin Pigments To hell with this push to get more black coaches in the NFL (ensuring nothing more than a long string of fruitless interviews for Dennis Green); how about a Super Bowl halftime show for folks living outside of Simi Valley? Jesus, it’s bad enough that the game was already in the bag midway through the second quarter without being subjected to Shania Twain, dressed up like a Reno hooker (in Raiders colors to boot), delivering freeze-dried crap that conjured up memories of Gatlinburg, Tennessee (the nation’s premiere Lemmingville, besmirching the planet at the foot of the Smokies). Then it was No Doubt’s Gwen Stefani duetting with Sting on “Message In A Bottle,” setting back the White Pride movement another century. Where was the greasy cheese we’ve come to expect from our Super Bowl bathroom break, a little slab of real Americana circa 2003? The options were endless: A little “Dirrty” T&A from Christina Aguilera, perhaps doing some velvet rope thing with Janet Jackson; a coked out (not crack!) Whitney Houston doing “God Bless America” while naval warships demonstrate an Iraqi training exercise off the coast of San Diego; tape of John Madden mooning the audience from the window of his bus while Madden himself, black marker at the ready, telestrates an African-American penis entering his rear orifice. Instead, I had to switch over to the SNL and Jimmy Fallon’s parody of some white rock act. No lie: He and his band sounded better and fresher than anything being performed on the 50-yard line. 1:13:48 PM    comment []

The Beauty Of Badu Walked across the street from the Wolves-Clips game at Target Center to catch the rest of Erykah Badu’s sold-out show at First Avenue Friday night. What struck me was how much the lady’s music seems like an extension of her enormous personal charisma—it’s lithe, wiry, ethereal, and bold all at the same time. Badu had her customary pot of tea beside her, but eschewed the other accoutrements of her Nubian flower-child vibe, the incense and the turban. In place of the head wrap, she sported a mushroom-cloud afro that Oscar Gamble would envy, punctuating an ensemble that included thick wrist bracelets, a pale orange leotard, jeans, and a big-ass pair of platform boots straight out of the Bootsy-P-Funk era. Aside from one new tune, “Give Me Misery” (Badu asked if she could perform it, then cautioned the crowd to be gentle, because “I’m sensitive about my shit”), and an interpolation of “Rimshot” from Baduizm, all the material from the hour I caught was from Mama’s Gun. True to the spirit of that disc, the songs morphed together and hovered like heat waves off blacktop: “Hey Sugah,” “Props To The Lonely People,” “Green Eyes,” and a handful of others. Success and maturity has made Badu more personable, less guarded, and more immediate in her interactions with the audience. At one point she scolded a woman who was squabbling or scrapping down near the stage to her right, cut off her song because of the buzzkill, then coming back and spraying water on the offender, with a big grin on her face to mitigate the insult. Twice she stage-dived into the crowd, a racial rainbow of folks who were packed tight into the joint and frequently sang along with the tunes. It was a beautiful night, reminiscent of First Avenue’s heyday, before Clear Channel steered most of the prime club-sized gigs into Quest. I prefer Baduizm to Mama’s Gun, which felt like an admirable but flawed attempt to cohere her sound around more gauzy satin textures. But my affection for Badu--who I first interviewed on a freezing cold night in the basement of the Fine Line for a profile in Spin—and my affinity for Mama’s Gun was substantially increased on Friday. This is a smart, sexy woman who trusts her intuition to take her places other singer-songwriters haven’t gone before. I look forward to the rest of the ride. 11:45:55 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 Britt Robson. Last update: 4/6/03; 6:13:58 AM.