48 Hills music critic John-Paul Shiver is reporting this week from the Noise Pop Festival. Follow all his coverage here.
The waves of influence remain incalculable. Cymande, not those famous Liverpool mop tops, were the first British band to be victorious at the famed, make-it-or-get-booed, proving ground of all time: the Apollo Theater in Harlem, USA, circa 1973.
Generally speaking, if you win in that venue, the world is yours.
Unfortunately Cymande—the funky band formed by half-dozen musicians who came to England as children of the West Indies—didn’t get any TV promotion upon returning to the UK after touring the states with the likes of Mandrill, Kool & The Gang and Al Green. So they broke up.
Yet they’d somehow become one of the most sampled British bands ever. Those first three albums, the music that swooned the Apollo, recorded between 1972 and 1974, were filled with a mystical amalgamation of rock, psyche, funk, reggae, dub, soul, and Latin accents, which would prove to be so future.
In the band’s 40-year absence, Cymande’s arrangements—a dense bouillabaisse of polyrhythmic concoctions supported with Earth, Wind & Fire-type horn charts which dealt real heat and low-end frequency grooves—gave birth to modern dance music of the late 20th century.
Disco, hip-hop, deep house, drum and bass, acid jazz, and trip-hop all contained snippets of their songs, by way of sampling, the new arbiter of beat construction. Cymande came to life in landmark Fugees’ charts, early De La Soul’s eclectic productions, and even primal Gang Starr arrangements.
The future, along with top DJs Nicky Siano and such, caught up with this group.
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So when the reformed Cymande came on stage at their headlining Noise Pop performance at August Hall on Wednesday night, hearing the well-wishing cheers, tons of shouts, accolades, and chirps coming from the sold-out venue, lead singer Raymond Simpson immediately reacted before one note got played: San Francisco, we already feel your love.
As identified, it was a San Francisco night, with hundreds of patrons wearing concert tees; even several bright yellow “Listen To Sade” ones from the Andre 3000 New Blue Sun tour popped up in the crowd, indicating what many knew to be fact when the show went on sale in December. This would be a vinyl-head assortment of folks.
A slew of balding record collectors swelled up with emotion as Cymande opened with “Sweeden,” a sleek burner from their new release Renascence, sending fans, who had been waiting to see this archetypal outfit perform for decades, into dizzying hysterics.
Now understand, SF is a mecca and home to some of the pickiest, demanding, and, at times, most unemotional record aficionados on the planet. So if those balding white dudes were up in their feelings on just the first track? Oh, it’s by far a landmark moment in so many ways.
And who could blame them? To see these strident, exceptional musicians, just high-stepping, gliding to the energy, whom you assume are all getting on in years, but have not lost a minute performance-wise. Guitarist Patrick Peterson led the charge with sly yet exacting string-smithing, while bass player Steve Scipio kept time and cool like it was a holiday.
This show, full of goodwill and chest-out jovial spiritedness, and yeah, the crowd waited for their mega jam “Bra” that director Spike Lee has branded into our memory through cinematic verve in the decade.
But I was just as overjoyed to see these bastions of real Bay folkes, my lovely little city of record-whoreding vinyl junkies, get just as geeked for the B-side cut “Getting It Back,” with it’s inspirational horn intro, intricate drum cadences, funky-midsection breakdown and foot-stompin outro.
Cymande checked for The Bay’s deep crate record IQ, and we passed for sure.
