Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Indie Soul Singers Croon at Black Cat and Takoma Station

This weekend was one for soul-singer lovers. Eric Roberson did a set at the Black Cat Saturday night, and Geno Young closed out the weekend Sunday night at Takoma Station.

Before a young and sexy crowd, Roberson alternately crooned and swooned a good hour of ballads from his four albums, including his most recent “Volume 1.5,” working up a serious sweat in his brown velvet jacket in the process. Oh, how the ladies loved it. Women on all sides stamped their stilettos, swung their hips and waved hands in the air.

And most of the time, he was worth all the fawning. Like Tony Terry and Kenny Lattimore, Roberson’s tone is clear is strong, especially in songs that require range and vocal endurance. His pitch is lovely like Luther. Not as silky but something to get wrapped up in. Rhythms are complicated and bass heavy like Prince, so hip shaking is a given. Roberson was truly at his best when improvising diddies about college life in DC, and singing in line at McDonald’s to show to surrounding ladies in waiting that “yeah, [he] could sing.” Can I call you some time? Roberson is a rapturous entertainer.

Though not without flaws. On the downside, he lost folks’ interest with interludes that went on just a tad too long (even the back up singer looked aside in clear annoyance), and rhythms were just a little too syncopated for the band to maintain. For a few bars here and there, cacophony was the melody.

Where Roberson is a lover, Geno Young is a bit of a fighter, and he opened his show at Takoma throwing punches at the music industry for saturating radio stations with Ashanti and Usher. “We need a musical revolution!” he sang. The crowd of more than a few indie artists cheered him on as he called them out: “I wanna see Ya Mama’Nym in a video!”

And there was a sucker punch for an unnamed singer who, Young claims, denied him credits to a song he sent to them. “Give me my song back/you stole it” he sang to the rhythm of Jill Scott’s (or Geno Young’s?) hit “Golden.”

But those are just the juicy gossipy bits. The truth about Geno Young is that he resurrects the best of Rick James vocals with Donny Hathaway lyricism. He’s good. Good through his solo album “Ghetto Symphony,” a neo-soul excursion in and around love, community, and black manhood. Musically, Young marries breezy keyboard chords heard often in Roy Ayers with staccato-snapping bass beats.

But, Young’s best that night wasn’t his. The crowd hushed as he saaaang John Legend’s “Ordinary People” and, get this, a gospel version of the theme song to “Good Times.” Who does that?

Young, too, was plagued by a few of band-snafus as Roberson. The same band as accompanying Roberson the night before, they had not the opportunity to rehearse with Young and sometimes had difficulty with improvising and riffing solos. Nonetheless, Roberson and Young’s connection with the crowd before them more than compensated for the confusion behind them.

Sunday, January 22, 2006

After a hip Saturday night on the town, complete with a cool concert and after hours munchies, I cozied up to the Post. With Friday and Saturday nights always filled with mindless debauchery, I reserve Sunday for intellectual stimulation in preparation for the work-week ahead. Here’s what got my brain going (along with a delicious spinach and mozzarella omelette):

Congrats to the Hoyas for defeating powerhouse Duke and proving the Wizards aren’t the only boys who can ball up South. Hoya games with my older brother when I was a kid spurred my slow-simmering love for basketball that flares up during upsets like these.

An incredible 4,000 people attended funeral services for Sandy Allen’s grandson, Jon Allen Jr., whose Southeast homicide closed out the New Year. Her grandsons had become her life post-politics, and her grief is unbelievable. Allens older grandson Russell Mitchell was charged with the summer shooting of a beloved grandmother, and has been in police custody since.

Imagine living at work. Literally. Domino Sugar employers have set up trailers for their 210 employees and their families on the grounds of the refinery. “Dirty, dusty, and boring” is how a teenage girl who lives there with her parents and brother describes the community. Her father would say necessary. What’s the alternative? To be homeless and unemployed? It's a temporary solution that will expend its utility pretty quickly. Residents/workers emotional health collapses like the levees under the pressure of uncertainty while city and state officials fail to come up with viable solutions for Hurricane Katrina, four months later. Between sips of coffee, friend notes despair and depression has caused twenty-plus people to commit suicide.

Every thought there was something dark and not quite right about clowns, Barneys, Pee Wee Hermans, and other grown people who “entertain” children? Gene Weingarten explains our suspicions through The Great Zucchini in the Magazine. Really fascinating story, and I love his structure.

Finally, something I didn’t get to read, but will, Yardley’s review of work by John Gregory Dunne. I had a brief obsession with Joan Didion, peaked by the publication of her memoir the Year of Magical Thinking. I attended her reading at the Folger and was just mesmerized by her presence and prose. So interest in her husband by default.

So I'm fully stimulated for the week coming up to try to weasel out of jury duty (ten years and no service!) and own up to my parking tickets.

Sunday, January 08, 2006

Sundays are for reading the paper

My habit of reading the Sunday paper, undisturbed, first thing Sunday morning, began when I was about 12 years old. I remember sitting at the family kitchen table with my dad, long after we finished breakfast of waffles and orange juice, poring over the pages of the Washington Post. Dad and I had an unspoken agreement on how to share the paper: front page, metro and sports for him, Style, comics and parade for me. After about half an hour, we’d switch sections a murmur a few highlights. If I started reading before he finished fixing breakfast (as I sometimes snuck the paper upstairs to read in bed) he implored I keep the sections in order.

This habit has remained with me through the years, evolving to include coffee and CNN. So I offer a few highlights from today’s Post.

Obviously big news of the day is the Redskins’ advance to the playoffs by defeating the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. I watched the game at a friend’s house, while many were at national restaurants and local watering holes.

Famine looms possible in Kenya. Often food-shortages are a by-product of war, but in peaceful Kenya long-term economic and agricultural development is in question.

Into the Metro section, DC government is making progress to improve our beleaguered correctional services for adults and youth.

From the Style section, a family tries to maintain normal with mom in Iraq. Journalist Anne Hull makes interesting comparisons between she and her brother, and is a typical aunt in permitting forbidden snacks and trips to the neighborhood pool.

And in a departure from the Travel section’s usual coverage of personal vacations to explore unknown territory, Gary Lee reports on a black family's reunion. His commentary was so insightful, I felt I was at the buffet.

Finally, Johnathan Yardley reviews debut novel The Dream Life of Sukhanov. Not usually interested in matters of the Soviet Union, because of this review I’ll skim it the next time I’m in Politics and Prose. (Buy independent).

Enjoy reading.

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Mayor Barry Robbed

That 2006 opens with the murder of a former council woman’s grandson, the robbery of the city’s infamously beloved Mayor for Life give me pause among the moments of revelry and resolution making.

The ironies are many and evident, bright like the Christmas lights still hanging on my lazy neighbor’s front porch. Two city servants are victims of the city’s worst elements, murder and intimidation. Barry was a victim of a crime (instead of a perpetrator? Ouch, Rhonda!) after leading the city through it’s reign of being the Murder Capitol. The perps victimized public officials who, arguably, cared the most about them. And still care. Truly ironic. My heart goes out to Sandy Allen, who’s other grandson was charged with a summer murder. Just unbelievable. Barry on the other hand is something I’m thinking about…

Lots of folks have snide things to say about Barry getting robbed. That he got “got,” Mos Def style, as if it karma is a…that all of the years of being soft on prosecuting criminals have caught up with him. There were also corny variations of his T-shirt defense slogan, “B*tch set me up.” The Post even felt the need to remind readers of Barry’s temporary demise with the drug convictions, and tax returns he sent in such a fashion to redefine Colored People’s time.

Propelling each sucker punch is a degree of truth. Honestly, it’s easy for me to come up with these below-the-belt jibes cause I detested Barry and all the “Blacks can’t do nothing right”-ness that he projected to the world with his fiscal ineptitude and attempt to lead the city high on Bolivian marching dust.

But this DC girl has another perspective on Mair Barry and this unfortunate set of events. (If you’ve been in this town long enough you know how to pronounce the title with the appropriate drop-jawed sorta-Southern accent).

Prompted by Prince’s ditty, “Sign o’ the times,” I think about the perpetrators: kids. Maybe they were older than that, but the point is, back in the day they would have been eligible for the Summer Youth Employment Program. And that’s what it comes down to. SYEP.

Summer Youth Employment was one of the youth programs Barry launched and sustained through his tenure as Mayor. Every DC kid fourteen and older was eligible for a job in a registered site. Can’t even count How many kids signed up for SYEP each summer. Er’body. Personally, SYEP allowed me to get my first paid gig as a violinist, playing violin with the DC Youth Orchestra. For most of us, our jobs with SYEP were the first experiences we proudly listed on our resumes under “Employment.”

Barry came through for youth in other ways. He attended every high school graduation the year I graduated. Yes, he was late, grandstanded and made a minstrel-mockery that embarrassed our principal. But the man said he was going to attend, and he did. He initiated the Mayor’s Youth Leadership Program that welcomed young people into higher levels of city government. Barry was a visible and accessible mayor that made us, young people, feel like the city was honestly ours. And not in the sense that “we run this joint” like old Oak Hill, but that there was a role for us in the maintenance and betterment of the city. (“Betterment” is one of those old Civil Rights words).

These nostalgia-laced missives are not intended to sugar coat the man’s legacy. His failures are evident, and I’m pretty bitter about them. However, his legacy of commitment to young people begs investigation of what's going on with this generation that they would rob him in his own house. What do the young people know about the DC of old? Apparently as much as the sucker-punchers.

Tuesday, January 03, 2006

New Year in (P)review

With the arrival of the New Year, I’ve taken a moment to think back over the blogs I’ve written between first wandering on the title, “La Ciudad Chocolat” (and I think I’ve misspelled “Chocolat”) and now, some fifty blogs later.

Ever lived somewhere for a LONG time? After a while, it all looks the same. Same ol’ Hechts on same ol’ F Street. Same McKinley High School I see from the Redline and think, that’s where my parents met. Same Sequoia’s on the waterfront. That was DC for me. Very boring…

Until DC got the call to star in “Extreme Makeover: Urban Edition.”

Suddenly, the city that I used to know really well, (and frankly, bored me) was no longer. The changes scared me on some level. I remember wondering/writing “Where do I fit in? Where do any of us natives fit in?”

I started this blog as a force to reconcile the boredom of “been there, done that” with the surprised “what’s this? a tanning salon on U. Street?” I thought I’d be pondering that emotional dichotomy for a while, writing post after post about the ubiquitous condo developments, exodus of black people, influx of white people, and reference to Anacostia as the new “Brooklyn.”

Those topics soon lost interest, as I can’t honk my car horn at EVERY development site. It makes me look as crazy as the guy wandering along Naylor Road selling sweat socks, and the sound gets lost in the cacophony of hammers and electric drills.

Thinking I still had to have something to write about, other changes (read: just happened, or Rhonda just heard about it) caught my pen’s attention. Like the scandal over young professional nightlife dating social activism (i.e. Stockholm and Grassrootz Tuesdays). The once-smoldering arts scene that’s now blazing (see review on Wayna, night at the Studio Theatre, night at Bar Nun, fundraiser for Duke Ellington). And a smattering of political happenings I contemplated while in Busboys and Poets, like the execution of Tookie Williams.

And all the while, I’ve met fabulous, funny, and weird people while writing about these events. I kinda like living here, again.

Here’s a toast to 06 and all the urban (mis)adventures to come along with it. I’ll be blogging about it in “La Ciudad con un poco chocolate.”