News-watching can get a bit dispiriting at times. So its always good to remember that the same species responsible for robocalls, cluster bombs and The Bachelorette also spawned the treble clef and the Fender Telecaster. If theres anything that gives me hope for the hairless monkey, its not politics, but art. Music in particular.
Three shows stood out for me this summer. I missed the Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»appearance of the young R&B singer/songwriter Janelle Monáe, but managed to catch her at the Montreal jazz fest. After bringing the house down with an a capella version of Nat King Coles jazz standard Smile, the pint-sized Monáe belted out her science fiction-themed songs with the pipes of Whitney Houston and the moves of James Brown. She had the audience in the palm of her hand the entire time.
The second stunning performance was courtesy of Dead Can Dance, kicking off their August world tour at the Orpheum. Australian Lisa Gerrard and Irishman Brendan Perry, signed to the British shoegazer 4AD label back in the 80s, have mastered a singular form of world music that sounds both ancient and futuristic. Perry performed a mesmerizing solo version of Tim Buckleys Song to the Siren, but its Gerrards otherworldly vocals that stole the show. The seraphic singer nodded politely at marriage proposals shouted by men and women in the audience. Youre amazing, she softly told her lovesick fans, blowing them a kiss after the bands third encore.
The third big act involved former Mott the Hoople frontman Ian Hunter. With his omnipresent shades and corkscrew hair, the British expat rocked furiously during a thunderous gig last week at the Aladdin Theatre in Portland, Oregon. He and his Rant Band hammered out classic tunes like All The Way From Memphis and All the Young Dudes, along with selections from his outstanding new album When Im President.
The uptempo title track is a POV fantasy of a common man entering the Oval Office with a tongue-in-cheek intent to get his ugly mug on Mount Rushmore after bringing down the legislative sledgehammer: Im gonna lean on the one per cent/When Im President/I want a 28th Amendment. But the lyrics give way to a stark assessment of Beltway realpolitik: You hold those truths to be self-evident/When you become president/But somethin happens to you up on the hill/Its business as usual/How do you want to buck the system?/Welcome to the Pit and the Pendulum.
One standout track on When Im President is the slowly chugging Ta Shunka Witco (Crazy Horse), sung from the perspective of the Lokata leader stranded in a buffalo-stripped wasteland. Paid for the rich to steal from the poor/There aint no honour in ya. well, that great white father down in Washington/Ive got a knife between my teeth for the fork in his tongue.
Janelle Monáe is 26. Gerrard and Perry are in their early 50s. Hunter is an age-defying 73, and was mostly AWOL from the music scene for two decades before a four-album winning streak beginning in 2001. I asked the singer/songwriter about his late-life creative renaissance and if a line from British art critic Cyril Connolly applies: There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.
The pram in the hall couldnt be truer, Hunter replied on his website forum. If theres been any kind of renaissance its because I forgot myself and then remembered myself when M.R. passed. (Thats his close friend and creative foil Mick Ronson.)
Ronson, who died of liver cancer in 1993, is hardly a household name although his instantly recognizable guitar lines are scattered across the airwaves like diamonds. I have little doubt that Ronsons brilliant arrangements and stratospheric riffsstill heard in early songs by Ian Hunter, David Bowie, Lou Reed, Morrissey, Mellencamp, and otherswill continue to outlast the schemes of the privileged and powerful.
Good music has staying power. The music of Salzburg composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is all over todays albums, films and classical radio, yet the 19th century Austro-Hungarian Empire that followed his death has long been a footnote in history books.
Music can outlive empires, and that gives me a peculiar kind of hope.
www.geoffolson.com
