Saturday night at the Apollo, D’Angelo unveiled his 2015 “The Second Coming” tour, 150 minutes of funk, soul, neo-soul, and r&b so great he may well be able to tour behind it for the next 15 years. With a bare bones backing band (bass,drums, two guitars, backing singers and keyboards plus sometimes horns) the Vanguard behind him, D’Angelo veered away from the avant funk of his late December release Black Messiah to perform high voltage jams and deep soul ballads which had my birthday buddy True Groove’s Tomas Doncker claim it was the most fun he’d had in a concert in twenty years
It wasn’t perfect, it peaked too early and.. and… and… “Tutu” was a bad idea for the first song of the second encore and… and… and… it peaked too early, so it wasn’t perfect and it will get better though how I’m not sure.
That early peak? Half an hour in, D’Angelo performed the best 20 minutes of live music of this or for that matter most evenings, with a level of soul and mastery we may never ever see again. Set up by a jazz fuel obtuse and angular version of Roberta Flack’s “Feel Like Making Love”, the primary soul man of his generation followed the song with “Really Love” and “One Mo Gin”. This was a double up so great you may have to go back to Van Morrison following “Gloria” with “Caravan” in 1974 to find a better one.
“Really Love” is the one undeniable track on Black Messiah, it is the one we all agree upon, a Spanish American love song given a completely different angle by the spoken word intro (here on tape) and D’Angelo’s act of fealty and desire so complete it is scary in its intensity, “Really Love” should make its way to every other American Idol audition from now till the end of time. A full band introduction like indie psychedelia, Animal Collective or something, meets aricky ticky metronome of a beat and the Puerto rican woman’s speech and a flamenco guitar (less prevalent than on SNL) worked in lockstep with the swirling keyboards and D’Angelo’s falsetto dipping and weaving and hustling her with a desire almost frightening the more you think about it. In the same cape and hat he wore on SNL last week, the man heated that song to a percolating overflow, scatting over the melody and burying deep and deep while the keyboards add jazz inflected chords through to the ending and D’Angelo pushes himself so deep into the feelings and suddenly he sounds like Ella Fitzgerald and Aretha Franklin at the same time working his way to the end.
An astonishing song but wait, it pauses for a moment before the second beat intro to “One Mo’ Gin” had the audience screaming before the piano lick had even come in. I consider this D’Angelo’s greatest song, better than “Untitled (How Does It Feel)”, and this version is epic beyond belief. Tomas claimed it alone would’ve been worth the price of admission and I agree completely, these two songs set up everything that happened before and will happen after. After a glorious and straightforward run through with D’Angelo on piano, he stands up and takes the mic and transforms the song into the hottest slow burn ballad you’ve ever heard. “eyeeeeyeeeeeyeeee” the back up singers like another instrument and D’Angelo uses them to launch into an almost painful vocal improvisation during a long soulful jam, longer than the song itself, it makes your heart ache. These two songs back to back are so good it frees him in all directions, he can do anything. As he tours with this centerpiece (though not in the center), he will destroy one audience after another forever.
Yes, it is the height of “The Second Coming” but it isn’t all of “The Second Coming”. The show boils down to this:
1 – Funk workouts
2 – Avant funk workouts
3 – Stone cold ballads
It really is the D’Angelo music history writ large. In 1995 (20 years ago!), D’Angelo was a street level black funker and balladeer with a ton of credibility as the sort of rough hewn guy that works well in the Black projects. Like Prince if Prince was blacker or George Clinton if Clinton could sing, he mixed them both. It took him five years to release Voodoo in 2000 and I always thought Voodoo was his 1970sish Motown album, Motown in L.A., Motown when Marvin Gaye was a little out there and Stevie wonder was going everywhere. It was a mix of out there bass, jazz infractions and great great songs. But it wasn’t about “Chicken Grease” bass leaden or “Feel Like Making Love”‘s neo soul jazz, it was about “One Mo’ Gin” and “Untitled (How Does It Feel”)”. He lost the street and gained everybody else. Then after a fifteen year jump off the deep end of black man middle class eccentricity, D’Angelo worked his way back with Black Messiah last year, an album that feels like Voodoo put through a grinder.
The announcement of the opening concert at the Apollo of D’Angelo’s “The Second Coming” tour, before he left for Europe for a month, was met with hysteria (myself included), I’d caught him at Radio City Music Hall in 2000 and that was one of the best concerts I’d ever seen so, yeah, me and Tomas, a huge fan as well, were angling to get in and that’s for damn sure. Saturday night, the fifteen years were worth the wait, from the opening avant garde funk to the Funkadelic sampled first encore, D’Angelo and his behind the beat bassman Pino Palladino, so important on Voodoo, were in complete sync, it was like watching Roger Clemens pitching to Joe Girardi, yes that sort of intuitive performance.
The set opened with the awesome “1000 Deaths” spoken word Khalid “Nation Of Islam” Abdull Muhammad’s awesome “”When I say Jesus, I’m not talking about some blond-haired, blue-eyed, pale-skinned, buttermilk complexion cracker Christ. I’m talking about the Jesus of the Bible with hair like lamb’s wool” before D’Angelo performed “Prayer” solo and the Vanguard joined him for “Ain’t That Easy”. The entire band had their groove on. D’Angelo was relentlessly on the one, he moved, he danced,he high fived the front row, crouched down, snapped forward, moving constantly and never out of breath and never out of voice and always looking to use that falsetto to bring the audience, the women, to their knees. Very early “Ain’t That Easy” was a collective groove like Sly And The Family Stone were a collective groove and late in the night “Till It’s Done” was 2015 style Prince but better though misplaced in a live setting. “Brown Sugar” and “Sugah Daddy” were straight up killer jams, nothing avant about the way the band played here. It reminded me of the Allman Brothers, already the band seemed so well onnected and D’Angelo so attuned to the beat he could take his voice just about anywhere.
The pacing never lagged, the performance was never less than completely in the moment. This is as great as live music gets, it was entirely living breathing, improvise and yet tight as hell soul music.A party and an art form. dance music as the final frontier of sound and the greatest soul man of his generation returned with all his powers restored
AND THIS IS THE FIRST SHOW OF THE TOUR.
I’d hoped D’Angelo was gonna release the concert as a live at the Apollo album, I mean, there is absolutely precedent for that, but apparently not. Still not to worry, the D’Angelo camp is about to announce a March 11th gig in New York, miss it at your own peril.
Grade: A
Setlist
1000 deaths preacher intro
Prayer(D’angelo solo band join for the last verse)
1000 Deaths
Ain’t That Easy
Band introduction
Feel Like Makin’ Love
Really Love
One Mo’Gin
Alright
Brown Sugar ( w/ Horns(sax & a trumpet)
The Charade (w/horns)
Sugah Daddy (extended jam) (w/horns)
Encore:
Lady (w/horns)
Back to the Future (Part I & II ) (w/horns)
Chicken Grease (w/horns)
Encore 2:
Till It’s Done (TUTU)
Untitled (How Does It Feel
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