“I surrender, I surrender”
“Hug three people right now”
“If God saved your life, shout now.”
Funning at other people’s faith is a suckers game, and any way, what do I know? Making fun of Juanita Byzum’s bombastic bullshit power ballads is another matter entirely and her dreadful 20 minute opening set at Summerstage’s Gospel yesterday afternoon defied my ability to do anything but sneer.
Listen: telling a non believer of your faith is like your best friend telling you how wonderful his new girl is, after awhile it gets real old. And after awhile it becomes like not understanding why your best friend married his wife. You can’t see what he sees in her.
BUT
The great thing about music is it cuts through your prejudice, it makes a believer of you if only for a song. Or it doesn’t if the music aint there, and of the three acts I watched, two of them made you think “Hey, that Satan bloke… how bad can it be?”
WILB Radio, the Gospel radio station, put together this shambolic, disastrous mess of an insult. And did it so poorly, by the time headliners the Clark Sisters came out, the audience could barely muster a cheer.
I got there at 3pm in time for DJ Dee Whizz to start playing some Gospel. Two hours later I had seen precisely 20 minutes of live music. Juanita’s truly dire set of religious hard sell. I don’t know why they call it Gospel, it ain’t soul and it aint r&b plus backing tapes. Juanita says she stopped being an entertainer and started being a worshipper and I certainly agree with the former comment. Less funk, more ballads, the backing tapes were fucked in the mix (yet another day with everything fucked in the mix). Every single song sucked, though the opening A Capella “I Surrender” sucked less than the three others and “You Are Great” sucked more and all melodies were DOA, maybe Jesus can save them.
And then the DJ came out for another set. And then Kira Sheard, the daughter of the Clark Sister Karen-Clark Sheard. taught the grown upshow it’s done. From the opening “In Love Crazy”‘s funk work out to her extended ending because (again) the production was a complete shambles, Gospel exhortations, Kiki places herself at the precise spot where the spiritual, the secular and the sexual meet. Yes, the sexual. There is a million miles of difference between “I Love Jesus” and “I am in love with Jesus”. This is not heretical because it may well be subconscious. I am not trying to be disrespectful when I suggest that a woman standing mid-stage, shaking long tresses, leaning back and wailing “God is in me” is about a pure and delirious desire for a physical satisfaction. Indeed, maybe desire is the wrong word. Maybe it is already there. The audience can feel it and so can I. Like I said, great music makes me believe and while Kiki works the stage, exults, sings loud, passionate, from the soul.
The woman is a dynamo, all killa, no filla bundle of energy and faith. She testifies, we believe. Great set.
And then the station rep comes out and nearly gets herself booed off stage, sticking the DJ on stage for another 20 minutes and then after getting the audience to cheer for the 30 year vet, three Grammy winning Clark Sisters, says it isn’t enough and tries to make us shout for another 10 minutes while I guess the Clark Sisters aren’t ready.
People have had enough. You can hear the Godheads ignoring the DJ who is left wondrin’ if Atlanta is in the house.
Lookee: about this God stuff. I am an agnostic, essentially, I can envision having so little knowledge of the tik tok of the Universe and beyond, that there are powers and reasons beyond my abilities to comprehend. And I can imagine that Jesus could be a Messiah though his message, his reasons, are colluded. But I know for sure, if he had been listening to the Clark Sisters set he would have told them to shut the hell up.
Finally, the Clark Sisters reach the stage and the first song is a complete horror with the keyboards and the vocals way too low in the mix and everything else is so loud it is harsh beyond belief.
So they stop the set, fix the vocals but not the keyboards, and start again.
What follows is the worst song I have ever heard. Worst then Girls at Webster Hall.
How can a band that make their bread and butter with three part hamonies be off key. OFF KEY? They had no relation to key. If key was Australia they would be on Pluto.
And for the next two songs, while the vocals are better, the band is harsh, anti-melodic, just plain terrible. The audience look ready to boo em off stage any second and I simply love music too much to listen to this travesty a moment later.
Set after set at Summerstage has been botched by tech problems and poor mixes this year. What gives?
Dreadful, terrible, shameful.