I’ve been to two concerts at the State Theater in downtown Kalamazoo.  The first was in October 2007 when I saw Modest Mouse with Man Man.  Talk about a terrible show.  This year, however, I was graced with a free ticket to see Bela Fleck and the Flecktones.  The Flecktones are one of my favorite bands and probably my favorite act to see live, although most of their audience tends to be an annoying breed of yuppie-hippy hybrid.  Despite that, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones is the most revolutionary, and perhaps the most unappreciated band of the last two decades.

The Banjo-Blazer Himself

The concert began with a newer number.  The four familiar members of the band took the stage in a modest sort of lighting which suggested that they were comfortable enough with their ill-begotten appearances to know that they’re amazing musicians.  The awkwardness was clear, the audience didn’t even know if they should applaud, a rudimentary action when any headlining act takes the stage.  When the music began, however, all doubt about the protocol was removed.

Bela Fleck, chief songwriter and banjo player, blazed up and down his fretboard in a prototypical finger picking style that would leave most competent acoustic guitar players in the dust.  On his right stood Victor Wooten, who has been named the Best Jazz Bassist of all time by several reputable music publications.  The honor is warranted; typically, a six or seven minute segment of the Flecktones’ set is devoted to a solo from Wooten, who almost always receives a standing ovation afterwards.  Across the stage stands Victor Wooten’s brother, who is known simply as Futureman for his eccentric appearance and even more peculiar instrument.  Futureman plays a self-invented instrument called a Drumitar, a box-like instrument with a long neck and colorful buttons which produce the noises of a drumset.  Futureman also plays alongside a regular drumset, which he sometimes plays with one hand and the Drumitar with the other.  His style is necessarily unique because the band often plays in complex time signatures.  The final member of the band is Jeff Coffin, a virtuoso horn player who often puts two saxophones in his mouth to perform his own harmonies.  Coffin, although his talent is perhaps the most often demonstrated in the band’s lengthy compositions, is probably the least interesting guy to watch.  When you have the best bass and banjo players in the world standing next to each other along with an instrument that you can’t really wrap your mind around, you tend to ignore the tenor saxophone.

Alash

After the intermission, the Flecktones brought to the stage a band called Alash from the small Republic of Tuva, a region located in south-central Siberia.  Alash was less a “band” than a collection of Tuvan musicians who excelled at their traditional folk instruments and vocal techniques, the latter of which was an impressive combination of throat-singing and overtones which sounded like vey high pitched whistling.  The concept isn’t unfamiliar to the West, just not very well known: large male acapella groups often have implicit overtones.  Alash played three songs alone and a couple songs with the Flecktones, including a Tuvan-American rendition of Jingle Bells.  Their presence with the Flecktones, the band which the audience paid to see, is a testament to Bela Fleck’s insistence on surrounding himself with the most talented and interesting musicians in the world.  One of these Tuvan musicians also appears on the Bela Fleck and the Flecktones’ DVD Live at the Quick, along with a protégé steel-drummer and an Indian drummer who participates in a percussion-banjo duel.  Definitely worth checking out.

The set was about 150 minutes long and incredible to watch, although about half of it was traditional Christmas music Flecktones-style.  Despite cat-calls from the audience and some awkward moments (I really don’t like the fact that the State serves alcohol), Bela Fleck and the Flecktones performed with their usual and distinctive abilities.  The band tours extensively, so if you have the chance, you should check them out.

For tour dates and other information, see http://www.flecktones.com/.

For Alash, see http://www.alashensemble.com/.

A good show took place Saturday evening in Dalton.

The specters of jazz greats Duke Ellington and Oliver Nelson were definitely present in last night’s Jazz Band concert season opener, Stolen Moments.

Under the direction of Dr. Tom Evans, last season’s jazz band sported a tight group of senior members. This quarter’s jazz band was young, of the fourteen members in the ensemble eight are first years, and this concert would prove to be the make or break moment for the Band’s season.

The set began with an upbeat number called Got Rhythm by Doug Beach.  Throughout the evening, Dr. Evans engaged the audience with his anecdotes on the personnel and the music. He posed Got Rhythm as a challenge to the ensemble, who play the head and shout chorus unsupported by the rhythm section. All three soloists, one of the three being Dr. Evans, himself, proved they did indeed have rhythm.

Towards the middle of the set they performed Michael Mossman’s mambo flavored arrangement of the Duke Ellington standard, C-Jam Blues. Standing all of 4’11” without the additional podium and heels, Margaux Reckard, First year First Trumpet, led the section skillfully. Her chops are yet another reminder that size doesn’t matter. The piece featured a great portion of the line-up, including the masterful cowbell player, Ian Miller, and as the audience tapped their feet and bobbed their heads, it made one wish for a dance floor and a willing partner.

They followed up C-Jam Blues with the surprising addition of third trumpet turned vocalist, Amanda Patton, for How about You? It was a standard 1940s pop hit, but under Evans direction and Patton’s brassy vocals it still struck a chord and highlighted the versatility of the group.

The concerts title piece, Stolen Moments, was set off by the band’s desire for “mood lighting.” With the lights down low and the cool jazz wafting overhead, the obvious temptation was to be lulled to sleep, but the hot line of soloists prevented the possibility. Aaron Parach on alto sax headed off the piece that ended with a drum solo by Mike “Iggy” Ignagni.

Evans ended the concert with a piece called Back Burner that featured the sax section in a new light. First year Tenor sax, Joe Barth, played into the credenza and left me wondering what that kind of young talent was doing outside of the conservatory.

Having proven themselves worthy by occasionally channeling a few jazz greats, the band capped off the night with an encore of an apparent band favorite, Buffalo Wings.  As the audience exited into the chilly November air, they expressed their awe and favor to one another, looking forward to a spring concert which would surely yield a more tempered and tight-knit group. The predominant question: how much better could these very talented individuals get?

Kalamazoo College First Year, Shafer Oudeh

Around a quarter of the way through my second beer of the evening my excellent time at the Fillimore Detroit seeing Converge, Mastodon, and Dethklok was starting to grow uneasy. Perhaps it was the extreme proximity of people—the show was extremely crowded—but that’s not unusual at a show with two popular headliners. The thing that was beginning to string me out was overstimulation: the stage during all three bands was dominated by something concertgoers had better start expecting more and more—a video screen. The concert’s multimedia approach made for a unique and cohesive experience—it was the only thing connecting the three bands I saw in any logical way.

Converge has been getting interdisciplinary with their bad selves for years. While the band is most well known as the world’s premier mathcore outfit (sorry, Dillinger Escape Plan) Vocalist Jacob Bannon is a celebrated visual artist whom FIGHT! Magazine credited with creating the skulls-with-wings motif the mainstream public (especially Affliction tee shirts) has so lovingly adopted. Bannon has been in control of the band’s now-iconographic imagery and art work for years—as they played, the video screen kept a static image of his excellent artwork on their new album Axe To Fall.

Still, they felt like the odd band out to me. Their abrasive and technical hardcore had most people besides myself standing about aimlessly, despite the boys playing their guts out; Bannon raced around the stage at terminal velocity shrieking his damndest, and guitarist Kurt Ballou did not so much play his guitar as domestically abuse it into creating sounds no manmade thing should be able to make. Even though Axe To Fall is by far their most accessible record, the material’s light years away from the power hooks touted by the rest of the bill. I’ll be seeing Converge again in a more intimate setting on their next tour to see how the sound translates to people who want to hear it.

Mastodon kicked the affair into high gear for their set by playing their 2009 opus Crack the Skye (currently frontrunner in my best album of 2009 list which I have written about before) in its entirety.  From my position near the front and center the sound was excellent, but due to sound issues—the drums, kick especially, were far too loud over the PA system—much of the nuance of that album was rendered moot to most of the audience, even though they sang nearly every lyric with guts and fury befitting Mastodon. The concert was accompanied by a film heavily inspired by German expressionist films (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari natch) which illuminated the obscure narrative behind the music. The images, often psychedelic and symbolic, pulled the album out of the realm of pure music and into an experience. This was the closest thing to seeing Pink Floyd’s seminal tour of The Wall that I may ever take part in—an experience I deeply cherish.

It occurred to me that in the age of downloading replacing the physical product, the music itself has become a promotional tool for the actual product. We here at The Kosmo are trying to bring Journalism into this abstract cloudform possibility that some people call “The New Media.” But before then, I hadn’t considered that the media I critique may be further along than I am. The question plaguing the ill music industry has become, to the progressive-minded: what is the product now? Mastodon’s answer is the live experience.

Dethklok’s answer, however, is not just the live experience, nor the Metalokalypse cartoon, nor the album, but Dethklok in and of itself. People, hear me out, Dethklok is the future.

Dethklok wants YOU to be a 'Gear'

Musically speaking, Dethklok isn’t anything too special—their particular brand of melodic death metal neatly bridges Queen and Cannibal Corpse neatly but predictably (they still write better songs than most similar ‘serious’ bands, though). Their live performance in terms of musicians was likewise straightforward, minus of course their drummer, the legendary Gene Hoglan. Dethlkok’s greatest asset is their songs—unlike predecessors Spinal Tap, Dethlkok know how to write a song that is at once brutal, catchy, melodic and funny, with healthy doses of blackened social criticism in most of their tunes.

It did not occur to me until seeing the song live with visual component that “Into the Water” was as much a warning about global warming as a song about the world being conquered by fish. The best laughs probably went to “Dethsupport,” both a rollicking barnburner about euthanasia as well as a tribute to the classic Death song “Pull the Plug”… until the song turns its barbs on the healthcare system, making small’s “It’s costing too much/ pull the plug,” frighteningly relevant. Dethlkok’s performance was all about the visual component, showing synchronized music videos matching their setlist in the style of the Metalokalypse cartoon featuring the show’s characters.

The experience impressed upon me that Dethklok is pure product, taking Spinal Tap to its logical extreme in the modern era. The TV show, videos, live concert, and album all function as one to convey Dethklok as a cohesive whole, in efforts to make frontman/voice actor Brendan Small’s semi-fictional band an actual cultural force aimed directly at both metalheads and non-heshers.

Small is aware of the cartoon’s appeal to non-metalheads: one cartoon interlude as the band re-tuned their guitars humorously explained the rules of the mosh pit to those new to the experience. As the cartoon explained “knocking someone down and not picking them up is what we scientifically refer to as a dick move.” Even I laughed out loud at that one. The concert even followed a bizarre and nonsensical plot; bringing performance back into the realm of musical theater… does that make the ‘Klok Rent for Slayer fans? Dethklok’s crowd more than any other was full of young people and women, both rarities in extreme metal, probably drawn in by the theatriciality and polish of the presentation as a whole.  Only a group of performers as in-tune with their audience could get away with calling their fans brainless mutants and be greeted with rousing cheers—a testament to how well formulated and thought out the Dethklok brand is, and how effective Small’s pitch black humor connects with the modern media age.

The Kalamazoo College dance company Frelon decided to expand their normally annual showcase to a Fall/Spring split.  Tonight, the talented group showed off their affinity for all things art, not just dance, but also spoken word poetry, music, and interpretive performance.  Frelon extended an invitation to all talented students within the Kalamazoo College community, giving them an opportunity to creatively express themselves in front of an audience in Dalton Theater, Light Fine Arts.  Not only that, but this year Frelon has created a grant to help students in the tricollege area complete any their art-related projects.   This grant was made possible through collaboration with the Arts Council of Kalamazoo (http://www.kalamazooarts.com/).  Katy Ehlert, one of Frelon’s six senior-directors, says that “the big qualification for it is that these artists have to support Kalamazoo and have an impact on the Kalamazoo community in general.”

The short performance of “Arts, Feets & Beats” was divided into two acts, both of which contained a pleasing amount of every element the show had to offer (dance, song, etc.).  Although I want to avoid critiquing the individual performances, some of them really stood out, especially “Mercy”, choreographed by Katy Ehlert, “Crestfallen Angel”, an original song by Chris Hutchinson, and “Nightingale”, performed by Natalie Brazeau, Laura Fox, and Claire Lindley.

The dance numbers of “Arts, Feets & Beats”, of which there were six, were probably the least interesting aspects of the show, although they were far from boring.  With the exception of the “Mercy” tap number, most of the choreography was amateur ballet mixed with totally unexploited modern Tharpism.  Every time I saw something great and original, it was followed by a jeté or a plié, techniques which some of the dancers couldn’t perform very well, especially in strict unison.  The Frelon directors, Katy Ehlert, Anna Hassan, Kristen Jost, Laura Marshall, Blayne Milbeck, and Marina Takagi, performed in almost every dance.  They’re the directors for good reason: not only are they seniors at Kalamazoo College, but they were also the best dancers on-stage, always keeping positive energy and poise, which made them a real treat to watch.

The second act, which began with a reading by our very own Entertainment Editor Joseph Schafer, was outstanding.  Whether purposefully or not, the ambiance, the lighting, and the physical performances of the second half were much more cohesive than those of the first.  It was as though the pieces had fallen into place, which is not to say that the performances of the first act lacked in any way; it was the act itself that was trumped by its twin.  “I love you guys.  This poem is deep.  It’s about the ocean,” said Schafer, who beat out his second poem in a way that perfectly transitioned into Ben Cooper’s original instrumental “Oklahoma Revisited.”

Furthermore, the second act really utilized the space of Dalton Theater to its advantage.  Specifically, the “Rhinoceros” performance by the Kalamazoo College Theater Department and the song “Nightingale”, performed by those previously mentioned, truly allowed the audience to succumb to the experience and the abstraction of space.  This with the duller tones of the lighting (which deserves much credit) made for a positively eclectic experience.

Like all college student performances, however, “Arts, Feets & Beats” was hurt by its audience, who cat-called, yelled, and screamed out names at every available opportunity.  Although Frelon has a history of eliciting such reaction, it’s still unnecessary.  Whether or not it bolsters the performance and the performers, it cheapens the experience for those who are not screaming and cat-calling.  For example, the last dance “Green Light”, choreographed by Erik Aiken and Blayne Milbeck (another noteworthy performer) was a perfect end to the drabber tone of the second act.  It was upbeat, yet repressive.  It was ecstatic, yet exhausting.  And it was almost ruined by the people behind me.

All in all, “Arts, Feets & Beats” was a worthwhile show which deserves a second performance.  Every performer should be proud of themselves.  Frelon should congratulate itself especially for organizing such a wonderful show for such a wonderful cause.  If you missed “Arts, Feets & Beats”, make sure to see Frelon’s regular Spring show at Kalamazoo College during Spring of 2010.