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Archive for the ‘Digable Planets’ Category

Black Pumas (Fillmore Philly, Philadelphia, PA, January 18, 2024)

Posted in Black Pumas, Digable Planets, Philadelphia, PA, The Fillmore Philadelphia on January 19, 2024| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: January 18, 2024] Black Pumas 

My wife and I really liked the first Black Pumas album a lot.  I’m not sure why we didn’t go see them when they played Philly in 2019 (at the Foundry–he was probably in the audience the whole time!).

When this tour was announced, I was shocked at the price of tickets.  I later found out that this was one of the first times Ticketmaster listed the price WITH FEES, so the outrageous price was what you’d pay after the sticker shock, but with the sticker shock up front.  I resisted getting tickets even though we both wanted to go.  And then Live Nation sent a code for $20 off tickets and boom, we were in.

And then the weather discouraged us from going.  It was COLD, and icy and about to snow, and neither of us really felt like going out.  But we did.  And boy was it worth it.

Neither of us knows the new album all that well, but since they only have two albums out there was no reason they wouldn’t play most of the debut as well.  Which they did (7 from the debut and 9 from the new).

And the show was stellar right from the start.  From the cool backdrop (which not only featured the pumas on that poster (right), but it also featured the twinkling teeth and eyes.  And the lights were incredible.

The band came out with singer Eric Burton out front and guitarist Adrian Quesada to the right.  The rest of the band surrounded them–bass, drums, keys and tow backing singers.

They opened with a song from their debut and then more or less went back and forth between a new song and an old one.

The new album has a few more mellow songs, and they were placed properly to give the band and the audience some breathing room in between dancing.

The most impressive part of the show was, without a doubt, Eric Burton’s voice.  His voice is amazing on record, but it was even better live.  It soared and flew, whispered and screamed.  He hit high notes with ease and sounded enormous throughout the set.

Even crazier, during Know You Better, Burton leaped off the stage into the crowd–after parting the crowd, he jumped feet first off the stage, soaring through the air and landed on his feet.  He then sang the rest of the song from the audience with people crowding around him.

It was amazing hearing him sing “Black Moon Rising” and doing those soft but powerful “ow”s that come after each line.

“Ice Cream” sounded fantastic live and everyone was dancing by then.  “OCT 33” was really powerful and “Mrs. Postman” was more fun than the recorded version.

Quesada didn’t say anything, and he didn’t do a lot of soloing, but when he did, his guitar sounded fantastic.

Burton jumped down to the front of the crowd later in the set and sang with the front row folks.  He also handed someone the setlist before the show was even over.

We sang along, we danced, we raised our hands, we clapped.  It was a full experience.

And then they started “Colors” the big hit.  A woman behind me shouted “this is my song” and everyone around her no doubt thought, “no, everyone loves this song, duh.”  Despite her, the song sounded fantastic.  So big, so powerful.  Everyone’s voices rising along.

The only disappointment for the night was the two guys in front of us.  I knew they were trouble when Digable Planets came on and I suggested we should move from them, but a nice gentleman next to us sort of encouraged us to get in front of him and it was hard to say no.

Fortunately for me, their drunken idiocy was far enough from me that it didn’t really impact me.  But my poor wife was stuck in their wake (in fairness I did ask if she wanted to move on a few occasions and she said no).  For two guys who loved the band as much as they did, they were sure disrespectful–talking loudly, leaving for drinks every three songs and then even falling on the floor.  Ooph.

I had seen earlier that Black Pumas had been playing 16 songs, so I thought we might get two encores.  I couldn’t think of any other songs I wanted to hear and the came out and played Hello from the new album.

I always think that encores should be fan favorites–big rockers to get everyone singing along (like Colors).  But that seems to be changing of late.  Hello is a mellow song that is quite lovely.  They followed it with Rock and Roll, the final song on the new album.  The song is kind of simple, but boy they built on the repetition in the song until it sounded massive.

This was supposed to be my first show of the year until The Musical Box cropped up on my radar.  But since that show was a) a cover band and b) seated, I feel like this was really my first real show of the year.  And it was a doozy.  So glad we went!

  1. Fire ♠
  2. Gemini Sun ◊
  3. Know You Better ♠
  4. Black Moon Rising ♠
  5. Sauvignon ◊
  6. Ice Cream (Pay Phone) ◊
  7. Angel ◊
  8. More Than a Love Song ◊
  9. Confines ♠
  10. OCT 33 ♠
  11. Mrs. Postman ◊
  12. Stay Gold ♠
  13. Chronicles of a Diamond ◊
  14. Colors ♠
    encore
  15. Hello ◊
  16. Rock and Roll ◊

♠ Black Pumas (2019)
◊ Chronicles of a Diamond (2023)

no: ♠ Old Man, Touch the Sky, Sweet Conversations
no: ◊ Tomorrow

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Digable Planets (Fillmore Philly, Philadelphia, PA, January 18, 2024) [BLACK PUMAS]

Posted in Black Pumas, Digable Planets, Philadelphia, PA, The Fillmore Philadelphia on January 18, 2024| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: January 18, 2024] Digable Planets 

I was really surprised to see that Digable Planets were opening for Black Pumas.  Largely because I had no idea they were still a thing.

So a brief history shows that they formed between 1987 and 1989 and put out their debut in 1992.  This featured “Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)” which was a pretty big hit.  I had no idea that their second album Blowout Comb (1994) was a stark departure from the previous album, being darker, less hook-oriented and more overtly political in its references to Black Panther and communist imagery.

And then they broke up. They reunited in the mid-2000s and then again in the late 2010s.  But they’ve never released new music (just live albums).

So if you’re a fan of their old stuff, well, that’s all there is. (more…)

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Pablo “Feli” Boffelli–Punch (2015)

Posted in Afrofuturism, Architecture, Art, Cats, Dee Dee Sharp, Digable Planets, Drawing, Dreams, Foreign Books, Funny (strange), Huh?, Humiliation, Pablo Boffelli, Sex, Shabazz Palaces, Soccer, Surreal, Tiny Desk Concert, Yuck! on October 26, 2017| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: SHABAZZ PALACES-Tiny Desk Concert #662 (October 23, 2017).

Shabazz Palaces is really nothing like anything else I’ve heard.

“On the ground we have leopard skin carpets Only the exalted come in and rock with us.”

With those words, spoken in the opening moments of Shabazz Palaces‘ Tiny Desk performance, Palaceer Lazaro (aka Ishmael Butler, also of Digable Planets fame) lays the ground rules for all present to enter the group’s metaphysical headspace.

And, man, talk about being transported to the other side. It’s impossible not to envision the Seattle studio, Black Space Labs, where Shabazz’s otherworldly soundscapes emerge to provide the ideal backdrop for shining a light on the fake.

 It’s the perfect proxy for the growing sense of alienation we’re all suffering, to some degree or another, in today’s space and time.

Shabazz Palaces is perhaps the most unusual rap band I’ve heard. There are hardly any beats. The songs are trippy with washes of synths and other sound effects.  There’s no heavy bass, it’s just up to Palaceer Lazaro to keep the flow.

There’s an 80 second intro in which Palaceer Lazaro introduces the band and talks about their sacred study, safe from the “Colluding Oligarchs.”

The first proper song “Colluding Oligarchs”says that “sacred spaces still exist / safe from colluding oligarchs.”  Theirs almost glitchy (but pretty) synth melodies (which I think Palaceer Lazaro triggered before he started rapping).  His partner Tendai Maraire plays a hand drum and congas (as well as some synth triggers).  And all the while he is singing echoed backing vocals.  Meanwhile, Otis Calvin plays an intertwining, slow, almost improved bass line.

For “They Come In Gold” there is no bass.  He says “this one we wrote to our phones.”  There’s a weird repeating melody that sounds like  snippet of vocals. Once again there’s lot of percussion–shakers, cymbals etc.  Half way through, he puts a filter on his voice to slow it down (a cool spacey effect) and then speeds it back up.

“Shine A Light” includes some squeaky synths and Palaceer Lazaro singing into a different mic.  When the music starts formally, the melody is a looped sample from Dee Dee Sharp’s 1965 song “I Really Love You.”  The bass is back playing some simple but groovy lines.  That second mic is connected to a higher-pitched echoed setting when he sings shine a light on the fake.

[READ: March 15, 2017] Punch

I don’t know much about Pablo Boffelli aside from that he is an Argentinian artist–he creates music as well as visual arts.

This book is a collection of line drawings (which remind me a lot of things that I draw when I am doodling).

Since the book is published in Spanish, with no English information anywhere (it’s not even on Goodreads), I couldn’t get a lot of information about it.  So from the publisher’s website I got (in translation):

In the PUNCH world, space is a character that unfolds and unfolds in millions of scenes. Cynicism and the absurd coexist with hints of synthetic humor.

Punch is the book drawn by Feli. His imprudent stroke runs through the pages building a city in which everything can happen. In the Punch world, space becomes a character that unfolds and unfolds in millions of possibilities. The urban landscape eats everything, the exteriors become interior and the fantasies materialize in the most unforeseen forms. The cynicism and the absurd coexist with hints of humor: the joke to discover for that spectator who contemplates in a disinterested way.

Punch is tender and corrosive, is infinite and minimal. It reverses the logic of physics and plays with the scale: stacked things, types or giant landscapes, a springboard that does not point to the pool, soccer balls in a refrigerator, humans without head, debauchery and micro-obsession. Put another way: this book is crazy. We recommend looking with a magnifying glass.

(more…)

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