hoodooencoding

Beautiful songs from the Beautiful Ones: J*DaVeY in Concert - Berlin, Germany- 12.04.09

(photo credit: liveDEMO)

Tell ya what: If you wanna be active duty enlisted in the J*DaVeY Navy, you gotta show up 4&1/2 hours before the concert to make sure you find the obscure location they will be playing; call, text message and e-mail all your peeps to be sure they know where to come and what time to be there; walk around for 3 hours in the crispy-cold Berlin night wind wringing your hands while worried not enough local hipsters will show, cause nobody’s straggling on the street but tourists; gird your loins with sushi and jasmine tea looking dressed to impress like Kayne West and walk by your car every 30 minutes, to see if it’s been towed away on a half-deserted street.

I did all this.

I was there.

I was the man.

I suffered.

But for my troubles, I was rewarded with the Bronze Medal of Fortitude in the form of an unforgettable, incredible night of performance, music and inspiration: a new-wave, hip-hop, holy-ghost revival filled with sights, sounds, souls and spirits I shall never ever forget, for J*DaVeY did indeed rock my soul on Easter Sunday night!

Coming fresh from a third-eye-opening experience in London, Jack and Brook blew in to face off a notoriously jaded Berlin audience of 500+ in a Live Demo sponsored Cookies high-mass, bringing their mind-boggling, sonic rave circus, hypnotizing the hearts and minds of an always anxious, ueber-hip, multi-cultural throng.

Taking the stage at around 2:00 a.m., Miss Jack DaVeY (Briana Cartwright) ripped into an intensive-care set from “The Beauty in Distortion: Land of the Lost” CD, featuring J*DaVey classics such as “Everybody Touch It”, “Hi Sun”, “Private Parts”, “Mr Mister”, “No More” and “Might as Well”.

Pensively approaching the mic, Jack connected immediately with the already-hype Berlin crowd, overcoming language barriers, poor sound and non-existent ventilation, working her fine, high, head-voice, facing down any doubters, non-believers or latecomers wishing to worship in her world. 

Aided and abetted by the brilliant producer Brook D’Leau, who’s chord-clusters and synth swirls presented a perfectly twisted, springtime soundtrack, J*DaVeY presented probably one of the most intense musical sets heard in a Berlin club this year. 

Favorite moments:

1: At one point, Jack twisted her neck sooooo hard when she was dancing, it made my neck hurt. She is a performer who does not coast or hold back. Since the stage was raked a tad bit too high, she couldn’t help herself: she came down into the audience dancing, singing and breaking thru the “third wall” -- achieving intimacy with the audience. Jack reveals a lot of herself during her performances non-verbally: so even for Germans who might not have understood all the words, they understood her passion.

2: Brook got rhyme skills; I knew the brother was a great keyboard player, but I didn’t know he could bust a rhyme...very nice on the mic....a really pleasant surprise to see him come out from behind the keyboard bank and dance and sing with Jack....it looked like they were both having a really good time....and the audience picked up on this. The energy in the room was electric from start to finish.

3: My good friend Mo watched the show with me; she’s a talented performer, producer & musician in her own right and didn’t know J’DaVeY’s music before Sunday night....I turned her on to it....she was blown away: it was really cool to see people like Mo hearing the music for the first time and really getting into it, rooting for Jack and Brook emotionally in a call-and-response type vibe...it just proves that if your recorded compositions are solid to start with, when you play them live, they can translate for people who are hearing them for the first time. If music is supposed to inspire, then the hard work that Jack and Brook have put in is a genuine example of this performance principle.

Now Hear This Peeps: if J*DaVeY comes anywhere nearby to your town, RUN don’t walk to see them play, because they represent the future of music.

That is all:-)

links

http://www.jdaveybaby.com/

http://www.myspace.com/jdavey

http://www.missjackdavey.com/

Why Music Matters

There are essays that I read from time to time that I wish I had written.

The article excerpts below come from a recent piece posted on April 2nd by the brilliant writer, Steven Barnes, on his blog Dar Kush. 

This essay should probably resonate with many artists around the world, regardless of discipline.

The writer (not Barnes) makes several points that I connect with on a deep emotional level (although I do not share his cultural bias); for example:

“The first people to understand how music really works were the ancient Greeks. And this is going to fascinate you; the Greeks said that music and astronomy were two sides of the same coin. Astronomy was seen as the study of relationships between observable, permanent, external objects, and music was seen as the study of relationships between invisible, internal, hidden objects. Music has a way of finding the big, invisible moving pieces inside our hearts and souls and helping us figure out the position of things inside us.”

While I agree with the intention of this statement, archeological evidence actually supports the fact that the first people to understand this were African, and that the next people to understand this were Asian.  The Greeks came to this understanding much later. Instead of quibbling over this minor point, I refer to Robert Farris Thompson’s documentation.

What I truly appreciated however, was the statement:

“....I have come to understand that music is not part of "arts and entertainment" as the newspaper section would have us believe. It's not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund from leftovers of our budgets, not a plaything or an amusement or a pass time. Music is a basic need of human survival. Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we cannot with our minds.”

Preach on brother! This statement gives me victory!

I suggest you do read Steven’s blog (regularly) and read the entire entry.

It will give you victory!