We’re hitting the time of year when concert residencies start featuring heavily.
If you have the means and the time, it’s a great way to engage with an artist or band’s full catalog over a series of nights at one venue where you trust the sound, the sightlines for the artists performing, and the room’s overall character. While some of these details may sound silly, if you are paying a considerable wad of cash to hear a band’s full discography over a series of nights, such details become serious.
The Fillmore, located on the southwest corner of Geary Blvd and Fillmore Street, is one of those SF venues where you can look forward to all such factors with anticipatory zeal, no matter who’s hitting that stage. As for residencies, they’ve got a number of them coming up, including two dates with Slow Pulp just before Halloween, two dates with Galactic over Halloween weekend, and a six-night run with The Mountain Goats in mid-November. My Morning jacket and Neurosis are also on the menu. As always, The Fillmore delivers come autumn. So, get in on that action here.
Oh, BTW… We are Under The Stars, people. You know the drill, lovers of music and culture. This quasi-weekly column stays on message with strong-ass opinions, presenting new music releases and upcoming shows, hustling with the changes, and thunk-a-dunking outside the margins. Hop in. And thanks for spending some time with us. Let’s go…
LEROY BURGESS, “BIG TIME” [LIVE] (BBE)
I believe the song title “Big Time” should and could be used in reference to the songwriter himself, the King of Boogie, Mr. Leroy Burgess. His compositions have moved dance floors across the world for generations, even alongside our beloved Sweater Funk crew.
He started out in the early 1970s as a member of Black Ivory, then Convertion, Paradise Garage’s favorite LOGG, Kleer, and electro outfit Aleem. His collaborations with Patrick Adams, Inner Life, Dazzle, and solo artists such as Eddie Kendricks and Fonda Rae have made him a perennial fixture in the dance music wing of the American Songbook.
How lovely is it we are privy to hearing Burgess perform a live rendition of “Big Time,” accompanied by the 10-piece French band and longtime Burgess collaborative outfit Saving Coco. I’ll admit, until this project arrived, I did not know he wrote the Rick James hit “Big Time.”
If this release doesn’t make you run out and find where Burgess is performing next—and he is 73 years old—then, hey, I believe you have no pulse nor soul. Grab it here.
MESHELL NDEGEOCELLO, “DON’T YOU WANT ME” FEAT. CAT POWER FROM SYNONYM (BLUE NOTE)
Incoming from the land of “didn’t know we needed this, but now I’m not giving it back.”
Cat Power and Meshell Ndegeocello getting dubbed-out, flipping a cheesy-cool ’80s sing-alonger by Human League into a serious adult contemplation reggae joint to which you would not dare leave your partner alone on the dance floor. Holy shit! Do you hear the thunk-a-dunk going on with Meshell on that bassline, smacking you upside the head with coolness, those cutting horn lines, and just that full freaking body high going on with this production? And I’m sorry, peeps, this is the BEST I’ve heard Cat Power in a mighty long time.
Rewind this one like 20 times… it don’t get old.
If this is any indication of what Meshell has on deck with this new album, we—excuse me, y’all—need to be taking back some of those Madonna flowers from a couple of months ago.
CHOON! Pre-order the album here.
REMI WOLF, MUD (ISLAND RECORDS)
You will always be amazed, caught off-guard, but eventually pleased, with the off-the-cuff choices of this former Olympic skier who was on “American Idol” at 17. The former Palo Alto-er’s track “Bottle” from the upcoming, sure-to-be personality-packed album Mud makes a little, hitting pop song out of a candid tale of struggling with sobriety.
It’s not preachy or tear-jerky, just raw. It is the way Remi Wolf has carried herself throughout her entire career.
And no matter how eccentric, offbeat, or idiosyncratic her on-camera avatar is, she’s created to deliver those funk-lite earworms—from Benny Sings to Thundercat—you can always count on finding a jam amongst them, an arrangement that features those phenomenal pipes. She can sang and belt one out when she wants to. Just root for somebody who saw the easy way to becoming a pop star and opted out for their own unhinged and sometimes fucked-up path.
As always around these parts, we root for the Wolf. Grab some Mud here.
MENAHAN STREET BAND, ILLUSIONS (DIAMOND WEST)
If you’re going to do this cinematic-instrumental soul thing? You damn well better have some kick behind it. Word is 20 years ago, Tom Brenneck hooked up a studio in his tiny Bushwick apartment on Menahan Street and buggered his Daptone Records cohorts Dave Guy, Nick Movshon, Leon Michels, and Homer Steinweiss to start making music together. From that, the supergroup was assembled. Two decades later, they’ve added some Tempero Baiano—or rather, Brazilian legend Arthur Verocai.
This project, Illusions, has that weight, that oomph, that punch that so many of these instrumental soul-jazz projects desperately need to make those instruments talk, emote, hum, and even bark if needed.
“Palace of Illusions” is a bit of a somber reflection. It doesn’t wallow, though—it stomps along with attitude, those horns talking about yesterday, but those drums and bass punching through to the next day at all costs with tree-trunk crunch and that classic Verocai spice, just animating strings and atmospheres like it’s a 10-round pugilist fight. See this melancholy right here?
It bleeds, Jack. Pre-order here.
JALEN NGONDA AT AUGUST HALL, DECEMBER 1
There seems to be a Daptone revival 2.0 happening in the zeitgeist.
I can’t tell you how many different types of people have approached me, texted me, sent emails, and actually made fricking phone calls, all wanting to know more about the Womack Sisters. Listen, I deal with publicists all the time, but this rollout for Sam Cooke and Bobby Womack’s lineage is unreal. They’ve tapped into something rare in the digital-first world. It makes me smile because that, people, is authentic.
Jalen Ngonda seems to be part of the Daptone revival too, with his expressive tell in the reading of lyrics and that blinking sparkle in his voice. Get your fat, skinny, and midly shaped butts over to August Hall early—and if you wait too long and it sells out, you better start haggling, because Ngonda is sure to add to this new revival at Daptone with precision.
Get your tickets here.
