The B-52's について調べていたら、思わぬところで嬉しい情報を知ることができました。
長らくバンド活動を停止していた WAS (NOT WAS) なのですが、昨年末から米国内でミニツアーを行った後、今年の５月と10月に、本拠地デトロイトを遠く離れて、ロンドン Camden Town の Jazz Cafe で、ライブを行っていました。
既に新譜も用意されているようで、今のところ「Land of the Freak and Home of Depraved」というヤバメのタイトルがつけられているらしいです。過去にはレーガンの演説をダビングした曲もあったので、ブッシュを皮肉った曲も入っているのではないかと思います。因みにこれまでの４枚のアルバムには必ずフリークスを題材にした曲が入っています。こんな感じ↓
他にも Was のシングル盤は、これまで随分集めましたが、ヴァージョン違いがいったいどのくらいあるのか？よく判りません。今野雄二氏が Was について詳しいらしいですが、コンプリート・ディスコグラフィーを公開して欲しいものです。(ココも参考になります)
５月の Jazz Cafe でのライブ告知
以下は、10/26日、27日のライブ評です。メディアが違うと評価も変わるみたい。
=======================================
This is London
The crowd Was (Not) there
Reviewed by Graeme Green, Metro (26 October 2005)
The Jazz Cafe
Before Was (Not Was) take to the stage, a tableful of men discuss possible reasons why this, the first Was (Not Was) gig in 13 years, is so dismally attended.
Is it the ticket prices? The rain? Whatever the explanation, the venue for the band's first of four nights at the Jazz Café is barely half full. Emphasising their failure to cross over to a new generation that's going nuts for anything 1980s, those in attendance are predominantly middle-aged men. It's decidedly unsexy, which, for a funk/soul gig, sounds a bit of a death knell.
When performing live, Was - the brainchild of Detroit duo Don Fagenson and David Weiss - are thankfully stripped of the 1980s production sheen that smothers their records.
The jewel in their crown is singer Sweet Pea Atkinson (pictured centre), ultra-cool in a sky blue suit and who, when given the right material (the downbeat Where Did Your Heart Go?), is capable of letting rip with his gruff, soulful voice.
The problem is that, despite the band's claim that Don and David are 'two Jewish boys who should have been black', they don't convince as a funk rock band.
Hello Dad... I'm In Jail gets a few laughs but their medley (never a good idea) of Spy In The House Of Love and Wheel Me Out falls flat. Even their big hit, Walk The Dinosaur, fails to generate any great excitement. So far, it's the comeback that Was Not.
Until tomorrow, Jazz Café, 5 Parkway NW1, 7pm, £22. Tel: 0870 060 3777. www.jazzcafe.co.uk Tube: Camden Town
=======================================
First Night reviews
The Times October 27, 2005
Pop: Was (Not Was)
David Sinclair at Jazz Cafe, NW1
They used to be the coolest group of the 1980s. And guess what? Was (Not Was), now newly reunited, are still every bit as cool as they ever were. On a wet Monday evening at the start of a four-night stand at the Jazz Café, the seven-man band from Detroit sounded implausibly close to the top of their form.
As ever, at the core of the group was the band’s bass player and spiritual leader, Don Was (Don Fagenson) and his “brother” David Was (David Weiss) on flute, saxophone, harmonica and occasional rap duties. Other key members from the original line-up included the singer Sweet Pea Atkinson and the guitarist Randy Jacobs, although David McMurray, who had been “delayed at an airport”, was replaced at the last minute by the British saxophonist Adrian Revel.
Don Was, 53, who recently finished his latest day job as the producer of the new Rolling Stones album, looked relatively unchanged, and supremely at ease in his black dreadlocks and circular shades. And indeed the whole group looked in good humour and good shape.
But it was how they sounded that was the revelation. An early version of Papa was a Rolling Stone, perfectly judged in terms of melody, mood and groove, set the tone. Hello Dad . . . I’m in Jail produced one of several comic cameos from David Was. Wearing an MC5 T-shirt, he looked like a rock’n’roll version of Gene Wilder, as he pointed his flute at various members of the audience during the chant of Out Come the Freaks.
There was just one new song called Mr Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, a beefy, Stax-type soul number that Don Was claimed they had written with Bob Dylan for Paula Abdul. And a slew of favourites, all sounding even better than you remembered them: Knocked Down, Made Small, I Feel Better than James Brown and, of course, Walk the Dinosaur.
They took the final bow with Cold Sweat, a version that married the super-tight James Brown groove to a superpowered Stevie Ray Vaughan guitar workout. The funk, the rock, the humour, the musicianship, the tunes — they’ve still got the lot.
1984年の Was Brothers
以下は年初のニューヨークでのライブのレビュー
=======================================
The Sound of the City
Woodwork Squeaks Again
Back from extinction, eccentrics walk dinosaur once more
Was (Not Was)
B.B. King Blues Club & Grill
January 6
by Mikael Wood
January 11th, 2005 2:31 PM
We started out as a dance band," Don Was said near the end of the first Was (Not Was) show in New York in 14 years. That much was verifiable by the medley of early-'80s mutant-disco hits the band then played in honor of Ze Records chief Michael Zilkha, who was in the house to toast his old charges: "Tell Me That I'm Dreaming" into "Wheel Me Out" into "Out Come the Freaks," all of which grooved hard. But if the band began as out-there Detroit outsiders—led by brothers (not brothers) Don and David Was, and filled out by a variety of singers and multi-instrumentalists, including the inimitable Sweet Pea Atkinson—what on earth did they become? By the late '80s Don was a high-profile producer and the band's music was a bizarre mélange of tinny dancepop, hard-rock squall, chewed-up r&b corn, and absurdist spoken-word invective. Go back and examine "Walk the Dinosaur" on whichever Me Decade anthology you find it on—it's probably three times more bonkers than you remember.
At B.B.'s, in a muscular seven-piece incarnation that featured more members donning hats than not, the band did what all true eccentrics do: played like there was nothing weird whatsoever about what they were playing. Sometimes it worked: Sweet Pea growled through "Papa Was a Rolling Stone" with his eyes closed, while David McMurray took a hard session-guy sax solo. "Where Did Your Heart Go" floated away on a wave of maudlin keyboard foam. Don motored "Dinosaur" with a rubbery bass groove and David blew out a fruity flute loop. Sometimes their idiosyncrasies emerged anyway: "We originally did this song when I was a young reprobate," David admitted before revving up a tweaked-out "Hello Dad . . . I'm in Vail," complete with a sweet condo and impressive slopes; earlier, he dedicated "I Blew Up the United States" to "the victims of 11/2." Don introduced the evening's only new song by explaining that he and David wrote it with Bob Dylan for Paula Abdul. "She rejected it," he shrugged. "But it's good enough for us."
長らくバンド活動を停止していた WAS (NOT WAS) なのですが、昨年末から米国内でミニツアーを行った後、今年の５月と10月に、本拠地デトロイトを遠く離れて、ロンドン Camden Town の Jazz Cafe で、ライブを行っていました。
既に新譜も用意されているようで、今のところ「Land of the Freak and Home of Depraved」というヤバメのタイトルがつけられているらしいです。過去にはレーガンの演説をダビングした曲もあったので、ブッシュを皮肉った曲も入っているのではないかと思います。因みにこれまでの４枚のアルバムには必ずフリークスを題材にした曲が入っています。こんな感じ↓
1st 「Out Come The Freaks」→「Out Come the Freaks」これらをリミックスしたものもあるので、全部集めると膨大な数になります。しかし「Out Come the Freaks」って和訳すると「化け物登場」ってことで、「見世物小屋」に架けられた看板の文句なのです(本ブログには身体等の表現で今日的ではないものも含まれるが、当該作品の芸術性・文学性を考慮して、原文の表現のまま訳出した箇所がある)。５枚目に至っても、おなじみフリークス路線は堅持されているようで、どんなものか早く聞きたいです。
2nd 「Born to Laugh at Tornadoes」→「(Return To The Valley Of) Out Come The Freaks」
3rd 「What Up, Dog?」→「Out Come the Freaks」
4th 「Are You Okay?」→「Look What's Back (Out Come The Freaks)」
5th 「Land of the Freak and Home of Depraved」→？
他にも Was のシングル盤は、これまで随分集めましたが、ヴァージョン違いがいったいどのくらいあるのか？よく判りません。今野雄二氏が Was について詳しいらしいですが、コンプリート・ディスコグラフィーを公開して欲しいものです。(ココも参考になります)
５月の Jazz Cafe でのライブ告知
以下は、10/26日、27日のライブ評です。メディアが違うと評価も変わるみたい。
=======================================
This is London
The crowd Was (Not) there
Reviewed by Graeme Green, Metro (26 October 2005)
The Jazz Cafe
Before Was (Not Was) take to the stage, a tableful of men discuss possible reasons why this, the first Was (Not Was) gig in 13 years, is so dismally attended.
Is it the ticket prices? The rain? Whatever the explanation, the venue for the band's first of four nights at the Jazz Café is barely half full. Emphasising their failure to cross over to a new generation that's going nuts for anything 1980s, those in attendance are predominantly middle-aged men. It's decidedly unsexy, which, for a funk/soul gig, sounds a bit of a death knell.
When performing live, Was - the brainchild of Detroit duo Don Fagenson and David Weiss - are thankfully stripped of the 1980s production sheen that smothers their records.
The jewel in their crown is singer Sweet Pea Atkinson (pictured centre), ultra-cool in a sky blue suit and who, when given the right material (the downbeat Where Did Your Heart Go?), is capable of letting rip with his gruff, soulful voice.
The problem is that, despite the band's claim that Don and David are 'two Jewish boys who should have been black', they don't convince as a funk rock band.
Hello Dad... I'm In Jail gets a few laughs but their medley (never a good idea) of Spy In The House Of Love and Wheel Me Out falls flat. Even their big hit, Walk The Dinosaur, fails to generate any great excitement. So far, it's the comeback that Was Not.
Until tomorrow, Jazz Café, 5 Parkway NW1, 7pm, £22. Tel: 0870 060 3777. www.jazzcafe.co.uk Tube: Camden Town
=======================================
First Night reviews
The Times October 27, 2005
Pop: Was (Not Was)
David Sinclair at Jazz Cafe, NW1
They used to be the coolest group of the 1980s. And guess what? Was (Not Was), now newly reunited, are still every bit as cool as they ever were. On a wet Monday evening at the start of a four-night stand at the Jazz Café, the seven-man band from Detroit sounded implausibly close to the top of their form.
As ever, at the core of the group was the band’s bass player and spiritual leader, Don Was (Don Fagenson) and his “brother” David Was (David Weiss) on flute, saxophone, harmonica and occasional rap duties. Other key members from the original line-up included the singer Sweet Pea Atkinson and the guitarist Randy Jacobs, although David McMurray, who had been “delayed at an airport”, was replaced at the last minute by the British saxophonist Adrian Revel.
Don Was, 53, who recently finished his latest day job as the producer of the new Rolling Stones album, looked relatively unchanged, and supremely at ease in his black dreadlocks and circular shades. And indeed the whole group looked in good humour and good shape.
But it was how they sounded that was the revelation. An early version of Papa was a Rolling Stone, perfectly judged in terms of melody, mood and groove, set the tone. Hello Dad . . . I’m in Jail produced one of several comic cameos from David Was. Wearing an MC5 T-shirt, he looked like a rock’n’roll version of Gene Wilder, as he pointed his flute at various members of the audience during the chant of Out Come the Freaks.
There was just one new song called Mr Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, a beefy, Stax-type soul number that Don Was claimed they had written with Bob Dylan for Paula Abdul. And a slew of favourites, all sounding even better than you remembered them: Knocked Down, Made Small, I Feel Better than James Brown and, of course, Walk the Dinosaur.
They took the final bow with Cold Sweat, a version that married the super-tight James Brown groove to a superpowered Stevie Ray Vaughan guitar workout. The funk, the rock, the humour, the musicianship, the tunes — they’ve still got the lot.
1984年の Was Brothers
以下は年初のニューヨークでのライブのレビュー
=======================================
The Sound of the City
Woodwork Squeaks Again
Back from extinction, eccentrics walk dinosaur once more
Was (Not Was)
B.B. King Blues Club & Grill
January 6
by Mikael Wood
January 11th, 2005 2:31 PM
We started out as a dance band," Don Was said near the end of the first Was (Not Was) show in New York in 14 years. That much was verifiable by the medley of early-'80s mutant-disco hits the band then played in honor of Ze Records chief Michael Zilkha, who was in the house to toast his old charges: "Tell Me That I'm Dreaming" into "Wheel Me Out" into "Out Come the Freaks," all of which grooved hard. But if the band began as out-there Detroit outsiders—led by brothers (not brothers) Don and David Was, and filled out by a variety of singers and multi-instrumentalists, including the inimitable Sweet Pea Atkinson—what on earth did they become? By the late '80s Don was a high-profile producer and the band's music was a bizarre mélange of tinny dancepop, hard-rock squall, chewed-up r&b corn, and absurdist spoken-word invective. Go back and examine "Walk the Dinosaur" on whichever Me Decade anthology you find it on—it's probably three times more bonkers than you remember.
At B.B.'s, in a muscular seven-piece incarnation that featured more members donning hats than not, the band did what all true eccentrics do: played like there was nothing weird whatsoever about what they were playing. Sometimes it worked: Sweet Pea growled through "Papa Was a Rolling Stone" with his eyes closed, while David McMurray took a hard session-guy sax solo. "Where Did Your Heart Go" floated away on a wave of maudlin keyboard foam. Don motored "Dinosaur" with a rubbery bass groove and David blew out a fruity flute loop. Sometimes their idiosyncrasies emerged anyway: "We originally did this song when I was a young reprobate," David admitted before revving up a tweaked-out "Hello Dad . . . I'm in Vail," complete with a sweet condo and impressive slopes; earlier, he dedicated "I Blew Up the United States" to "the victims of 11/2." Don introduced the evening's only new song by explaining that he and David wrote it with Bob Dylan for Paula Abdul. "She rejected it," he shrugged. "But it's good enough for us."
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