Last night, Margaret and I went into New York to visit with Joi and a couple dozen of his other friends; we had a fantastic time, and Joi caught a lovely contemplative photo of Margaret (in extremely low light), plus a shot in which she’s giving him a quizzical smile, and a better-than-real-life picture of me (which he’s already added to the Wikipedia page about me), plus one in which I look a little glazed (the spotlight over my head adds an interesting element to that one).
But the topic I wanted to discuss was The Roots, of whose act we caught a few minutes. I had listened to Game Theory when Nate urged me to check it out, and I noted it as a noteworthy example of strong hiphop. But mercy sakes, last night they rocked, hard and tight. They played “Don’t Feel Right” and another song I didn’t recognize, and in between an amazing cover of Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War.” I’m revisiting Game Theory now, but if someone knows of cuts where their capacity to display the terrific ensemble playing and hard rocking they showed live, I’d be all over it.
[Later: Last night, Jackson Browne opened his mini-set by playing “World In Motion” (brave man, to cover Pops Staples!) — and today, Pops’s original version showed up in my shuffled playlist of roughly 13,000 songs for the first time in months. I’m just saying. . . .
Still later: And the joke’s on me, because it’s Pops Staples who covered Jackson Browne’s original!]
Transplanted Hoosier Jane laughed,
I love this. You may be the only music reviewer on the planet who would offer a description of a band that “rocked, hard and tight,” preceded by “mercy sakes.” (^_^)
Jane Ellen+