LA Eastside

Sunday night, I went with some friends to the Hollywood Bowl show headlined by Feist.

But we weren’t there to see Feist.

We were there for Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, and for nobody else.

In an interview I did with Harry Gamboa, Jr., about the exclusion of the Hernandez Brothers and their Love & Rockets comics work from the “Masters of American Comics” show at the MOCA and Hammer in 2006, Gamboa makes a sharp point on the nature of exclusion with specific regard to Chicanas/os and the art world:

“It seems that the idea of marginalizing certain artists…again, follows the pattern, where, if it’s included into the spectrum of what is visible, it has a tendency to point out the inherent flaws, the discoloration, the possibility that maybe other types of works are actually ugly…”

After Sharon Jones just absolutely KILLED it with an amazing, stunning performance Sunday night—along with what has to be the tightest working band in show business, no exaggeration—I was reminded of this quote by Gamboa as Feist took the stage with what has got to be one of the most pretentious, bullshit performances I’ve ever seen.

Ever.

I think because we were pretty drunk, we actually stayed through several songs before realizing that the ugliness slamming into our brains from Feist’s performance was somehow invading and displacing the beauty we had just experienced, and that we needed to split, pronto.

But fortunately, we didn’t leave before being really loud and obnoxious throughout Feist’s über-sensitive, politely raucous opening numbers, pissing off all the polite, young, white iPodsters around us who were grooving to her pseudo-Neil Youngish Canadian Dry folksy commercial pop mierda. Drunkenly giggling and talking shit throughout (mostly in Spanish, but with enough context so that they knew we were talking shit), I’m pretty sure that we (and a few other giggling jokers scattered around us) ruined some people’s Moments With Feist.

Of course, these were the same people who sat like very stiff, very uncomfortable boards, while Sharon Jones tore it up, and while we stuffed three of us into two ticketed seats, unapologetically squishing our grooving butts into all the properly seated Feist fans around us.

Some of the most notable moments included Sharon Jones channeling, honoring, and flipping, the dearly departed Mr. Brown in her version of “It’s a Man’s, Man’s, Man’s World;” the ultra-sexy “Let Them Knock;” and the funkiest version of “This Land Is Your Land” that you will ever hear, one that includes ALL of Guthrie’s verses—about resistance to the bullshit of private property, and the suffering of people on the welfare line, for example—and not just the polite, depoliticized ones that we learn in grade school. I kept waiting for her to drop her anti-statist, anti-war, “What If We All Stopped Paying Taxes,” but even though she didn’t take it there, she rocked it even more political and brilliant by busting out with all the classic dances (the Watusi, the Funky Chicken)—while the Dap Kings demonstrated how a real band gets you moving—in an impromptu lesson in which she explicitly identified the sources of these dances in the West African and Native American dances of her “two sets of ancestors.” Brilliant.

At one point, I turned to my friend and said, “Jesus, she makes Amy Winehouse look like a 7th grade talent show.”

And if Winehouse is a 7th grade talent show, Feist is that obnoxious, entrepretainer ten-year-old dressing up and mounting an “extravaganza” in her parents’ backyard to entertain all the neighborhood kids—and charging them a buck to see it.

Finally, as Feist roused a response from the audience with her big commercial “hit” (Verizon ad?), my friend said, “¡Qué horrible! Ya—vámonos,” and my other friend said, “Let’s get out of here already.” And so we did.

Check out Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, and other performers, at the Daptone Records website:
http://www.daptonerecords.com/

Also, check out the write-up on the Dap sound by Soul Side’s Oliver Wang in the LA Weekly:
http://www.laweekly.com/music/music/the-dap-kings-souls-new-royalty/19260/