SOUNDTRACK: KIRBY-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #32 (June 11, 2020).
With recording equipment as easy to get as it is it seems like every person on earth might have a record out someday. How else to explain how these Tiny Desk (Home) Concerts are just chock full of people I’ve never heard of before.
KIRBY has a really nice voice. These renditions are wonderfully low-key. It’s just Justus West playing a simple but effective guitar and KIRBY singing in a restrained style. This is at least the fourth time I’ve seen Justus West in a Tony Desk Concert (Ty Dolla $, Leikeli47, Logan Richardson) and I think he’s pretty fantastic. I’d like to see him features more. I’m pleased that she doesn’t do any histrionics, she just sings prettily.
.KIRBY’s panache here, bolstered by a yellow bodysuit and blonde afro, is infectious and — just like the sunny backdrop of her manager’s LA home — her vocal runs radiate a soft power.
She plays three songs from her debut album Sis.
The first track is “Kool Aid” and with a dose of millennial spunk she sings “New hair, new braids / Nina Simone with a touch of ‘Yonce,”
For the final song, the guy who has probably been on the most Tiny Desks in the shortest amount of time, Lucky Daye comes out to song with them. It’s a little upsetting that they don’t seem to be fully social distancing, but they don’t touch, so that’s good.
“Velvet” is another song on the show Insecure which I’d not heard of until yesterday’s Tiny Desk (Home) Concert. Wins my heart for her improv first line:
“If I was a president I would tax it [No trump].”
Lucky Daye adds a high vocal R&B line that is almost the same range as her, although she does eclipse his high notes at the end.
[READ: June 19, 2020] “The Grand Old Opera”
This is one of those rare Shouts and Murmurs pieces that actually has a punchline–it sets itself up and pays itself off. Most of them tend to be a joke that plays off of iterations of itself, so it was nice to have a conclusion.
The starting point of this piece is from a hilarious complaint from John Ashcroft (remember when he was the worst we had to worry about?).
Ashcroft complains that the opera gets funding from the NEA but people like Willie Nelson and Garth Brooks don’t. He then has the preposterous comment:
Those of us who drive our pickups to those concerts don’t get a subsidy; but the people who drive their Mercedes to the opera get a subsidy.
This piece centers around a discussion between the chief troubleshooter and the company director of the Metropolitan Opera House .
The troubleshooter is very concerned because there are people coming to the Met tonight on a Ford Taurus. Worse yet, they are planning to arrive early to get a good parking sport.
Out front where everyone will see?!
And word is that they have a sofa strapped to the top of their car.
How could someone who drives a Ford Taurus possibly be interested in the opera? Maybe they at one time drove a Mercedes?
Perhaps we could put up a billboard advertising a fake Garth Brooks concert–maybe the Taurus would automatically go there instead.
But thousands of others night show up.
Hey, Garth Brooks drives a Mercedes–maybe it would take him to the Met. How about if we put on Rigoletto on the in the field where the fake Garth Brooks show was advertised and when Garth Brooks shows up at the Met we can have him sing?
The one word punch line made me smile.
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