SOUNDTRACK: ALICIA KEYS-Tiny Desk Concert #978 (June 15, 2020).
My family was playing an online game where you have to give clues to name a person or thing. We did a pop culture round and Alicia Keys came up I think twice. And I asked my daughter is she knew who that was. She said no and asked me if I did and I said no. I couldn’t think of a song she sang and wondered if she was even still singing.
Literally the next morning, NPR posted this Tiny Desk Concert. I still don’t know what her music sounds like on record, bu this Tiny Desk version was really nice. I came away really impressed by her and her band. And I loved how much everyone smiled through the set.
Alicia Keys radiates compassion and kindness. This spirit is the key to Keys’s songwriting, which is rooted in introspection and mindfulness.As she approached her piano, a bit surprised at the amount of people in the room, she smiled and remarked over her shoulder, “Gee, the Tiny Desk is tiny!”
Before the first song, Alicia plays the piano and chats to everyone. Saying how everyone wants to be shown love. I thought it was just a nice opening, but it was a lead in to the song “Show Me Love.” Everyone in the audience sang along to the chorus very nicely.
She kicked off the set with an uncanny ode to combat the darkness of this moment in American history: “Show Me Love,” a single she released in 2019. No one could have predicted then how much her lyrics and musical healing would be crucial during this emotionally fraught time of unprecedented political and racial unrest, heightened by three months of quarantine due to a global pandemic.
The first song has an acoustic guitar from Curt Chambers (played in a gentle finger-picked style with occasional slapped notes). Omar Edwards sprinkles keys all over the song while (married) backing vocalists RAII and Whitney hitting some high notes and soft deeper notes (they are both very impressive).
Keys’ voice is really nice. She doesn’t do anything show off-y or divaish. She just sings beautifully (occasionally showing off all of her vocal chops).
After the song she steps away from the piano and says she’s her own personal tech–bang set change.
As she introduced her new song “Gramercy Park” she asked for some “talking vibes” so Chambers played some quiet backing music as she talked about how much we contort and conform and adjust ourselves for other people–with the best of intentions. We are so concerned about making other people happy that we lose ourselves.
The stand-out moment during her Tiny Desk was the premiere of “Gramercy Park”, a song from her upcoming self-titled album, ALICIA, which is set to be released this fall. It’s one of those timeless songs that will transcend radio formats and genres, with lyrics that address how utter selflessness and worrying about making everyone happy but yourself can throw your own center askew. The song’s spiritual refrain is sure to be a sing-along moment for the rest of Keys’s career.
It starts with a slow beat from Mike Reid with some lovely acoustic guitars. And the lyrics say
I’ve been trying to be everything I think you want me to be
I’ve been doing all the things I think you want to see
I’ve been trying to fulfill you and your every need
Now you’re falling for a person who’s not even me.
She said she’s speaking out a lot more. We should speak out in the moment instead of letting it pass, ignoring it, forgetting it, but you never really forget it and then six years later…
Introducing her latest single “Underdog” she asked what we would learn if we actually sat and talked to people. It’s a great song, inspiring to anyone who has felt put upon. This is such a good verse:
She’s riding in a taxi back to the kitchen
Talking to the driver ’bout his wife and his children
On the run from a country where they put you in prison
For being a woman and speaking your mind
She looked in his eyes in the mirror and he smiled
One conversation, a single moment
The things that change us if we notice
When we look up, sometimes
There’s cool oooohs from the backing vocalists and a nice upright bass from Ant Parrish.
After crowdsourcing suggestions, she and her band delivered a riveting rendition of Keys’s breakout 2001 single, “Fallin’.”
I didn’t know this song and I wonder how different it sounds from the original. She sets up the beginning with some brash singing and the backing singers do some cool loud vocals.
Keys also impressed me with her great piano playing.
I’m embarrassed that Ii didn’t know who she was, because she’s pretty great.
[READ: June 23, 2020] “School of Xerex Fino”
This month’s issue of The Walrus is the Summer Reading issue and features two pieces of fiction, one memoir and three poems.
The second piece is a poem. I don’t know what Xerez Fino is and can’t find anything about it.
There are five stanzas. The first sets up that the club where they met was Toxic.
The third sets up the scene in detail:
shedding shirts, shedding disco shrill amyl
Nitrate; Doc Martens; plucked or pierced eyebrows
The last words of the stanza: Shyness shunned.
What’s powerful about this poem is that it is really just a snapshot of an evening. Perhaps understanding the title would make it more meaningful, but the last line really sets the picture:
Me out and down, our legs dawn-slaked and sprawled.
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