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Twilight Series: PAPA
PAPA
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APA may have formed in New York City in 2008 while the duo was still in college but lead singing drummer, Darren Weiss met bassist/songwriting partner Danny Presant as children growing up in Los Angeles. Weiss was raised in Encino but attended Crossroads High School in Santa Monica. He says Santa Monica was a major source of his musical inspiration. “While in high school, the girls I dated all lived on the Westside,” said Weiss. “Santa Monica was where I first experienced sex and heartache as an adolescent.” PAPA has an electronic-rock style a la The Killers meets Passion Pit. They debuted in 2011 with the E.P., “A Good Woman is Hard to Find” followed by their 2013 album, “Tender Madness.” The duo plays anywhere from large outdoor festivals to intimate theaters. The band is known for its energetic performances and their hits “I am the Lion King” and “Put Me To Work.” For PAPA, every show is a different experience. It's all about the energy of the crowd coupled with the band's strong sense of identity. PAPA has opened for such acts as Cold War Kids, Handsome Furs, Grouplove, Lord Huron, and Temper Trap. Despite PAPA's formation in New York City, Weiss says the band found the West Coast to be more welcoming. He attributes the band's initial success to the syn-
ergy that exists between music and the listener's surroundings. “Music sounds different in Los Angeles versus the lower east side of New York,” said Weiss. “Music has its own energy like everything else.” As a lover of music, born and raised in Los Angeles, Weiss says it's a dream come true to play a show at the Santa Monica Pier, and something he doesn't take for granted. “I started going to concerts in Los Angeles when I was 13,” said Weiss. “We tour so much nowadays we don't get to play L.A. as much, so when we do it always feels like a really special occasion…like our own private holiday.” Although PAPA is used to playing in a variety of venues from New York City to Paris, Weiss admits playing at the Pier might be distracting. “The Santa Monica Pier is beautiful.” Said Weiss. “We'll have to be careful to keep our attention to the work and not get distracted by the beauty surrounding us.”
CAYUCAS
SANTA MONICANS TO PLAY AT CITY'S ICONIC PIER After playing their first show at The Basement Tavern on Main Street, The Cayucas have graduated to Santa Monica's premier venue with a performance at the July 24 Twilight Concert Series.
Bandleader Zach Yudin has been a local resident since 2006 and after releasing an initial album with his brother Ben, he formed band to release a full length album in 2013. The group has found success online and is excited to bring their increasingly popular music to their hometown crowd.
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Twilight Concerts insider’s guide TICKETS
BIKE & SKATEBOARD VALET PETS
No tickets necessary, this is pure free summer fun (remember that?) all thanks to our partners and sponsors who have brought us another season of awesome free concerts at the beach. Make sure to show them some love.
Park your wheels at the free bike and skateboard valet located next to the beach bike path just south of the Pier.
TIME 7 p.m. — 10 p.m., but those in the know stake out a good spot early.
PARKING Parking is available in the 1550 Pacific Coast Highway Lot next to the Santa Monica Pier on a first-come, first-served basis. Those wanting to avoid long waits should try one of the municipal lots around Second Street and Colorado Avenue or grab the ParkMe app for live data of parking availability and prices. Go technology!
FRIENDS & FAMILY Bring them, the more the merrier. You will not regret it. This is one epic summer tradition.
FIRST AID/LOST & FOUND If you need first aid or assistance, please visit the Pier Tent or flag down a security officer. If it is an emergency, please call 911.
SMOKING Don’t even think about it, it’s a 100year-old wooden Pier, and we really like it.
Friendly dogs are welcome on the Pier only and must be on a leash.
during the show. As a reminder, alcohol consumption is not permitted in public spaces, but there are several full-service bars in the area.
WEATHER & ATTIRE
THE CONCERT GARDEN
It never gets too cold, but sometimes it gets a little chilly once the sun goes down. So bring something or head up to the Pier Tent on the deck to grab this year’s limited-edition sweatshirt or T-shirt!
There is a 21-and-over Concert Garden featuring Michelob Ultra, Barefoot Wines, an assortment of cocktails and non-alcoholic beverages. Do not miss this view.
SEATING
E-MAIL LIST & SPECIAL OFFERS
Seating is not provided, so feel free to bring your own chairs, blankets, etc ...
Sign up at TwilightSeries.org for special announcements, offers and invites.
FOOD & DRINKS
TAXIS
There are plenty of great food and beverage options on the deck and at the various restaurants on the Pier. Most even have to-go options perfect for munching
Let someone else do the driving. Download the Taxi Magic app and use promo code TCS2014 for $10 off your first ride.
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Myspace makes music social with concert sponsorships LOS ANGELES BASED COMPANY SEES PARTICIPATION IN PHYSICAL EVENTS AS AN EXTENSION OF IT’S ROLE AS A DIGITAL MUSIC VENUE
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he Twilight Concert series is a huge undertaking that requires the efforts of many staff, volunteers and sponsors. For the second year in a row, Myspace has stepped up as a leading supporter of the popular music series. Myspace has undergone a radical transition in the past few years. The company was founded in 2003 as one of the first social media sites but was purchased by Tim Vanderhook, Chris Vanderhook and Justin Timberlake. The trio transformed Myspace into one of the webs leading music sits. Users have access to more than 53 million tracks and videos, something the company describes as the world's largest digital music library. Mazen Alawar, director of marketing for the company, said Los Angeles is the company's hometown so it made sense to become a sponsor for one of the area's premier music events. He said Myspace wants to be place where everyone with an interest in music can gather and events like TCS provide an opportunity for everyone to connect in person in the same way the do online. "With 30 years of doing this, they have done a fantastic job year after year," he said. "We love to be attached to these
events. With the energy, talent and fans everywhere ere, this is a perfect place to do all of that." Alawar said the partnership has been a boon for everyone involved. "We're building on the success of last year and it's been fantastic," he said. "The response from the community and the response from the fans has been amazing. We're lucky to be able to do this every year." As part of their support for TCS, the company is hosting a profile for the shows at https://myspace.com/twilightconcertseries. Sponsoring concerts is part of the sites renewed focus on music and artists. According to Myspace, the site has more than 13 thousand songs uploaded daily from 14.2 million artists world wide. The site has provided a home for millions of unsigned artists and according to officials, the technology is uniquely suited to allow emerging artists to connect with potential fans. "Myspace drives social interaction by providing a highly personalized experience around entertainment and connecting people to the music, celebrities, TV, movies, and games that they love," said
the company in a statement. "These entertainment experiences are available through multiple platforms, including online, mobile devices, and offline events The company has leveraged it's resources to bring in talented staff who are committed to it's mission. “I'm impressed with what Myspace has accomplished in less than year. Leadership's commitment to setting their own course is truly admirable,” said Mitchell Pavao, vice president of product & technology in a statement. “What people don't realize is that when they rebuilt Myspace, they did so on top of one of the deepest tech stacks in the industry. From a product perspective, Myspace is at the forefront of technology, which is a very big draw for tech geeks like me. Naturally, I want to be part of that history.” The company is building a strong sales pitch based on its user base. The company is combining the passion of music with the power of social media to help customers reach users in new ways. The company partnered with several brands across several categories to hone it's advertising products and has been able to scale its partnerships by creating specialized teams dedicated to specific goals.
“Reaching young consumers is one thing; connecting with them is another. To do this effectively, the approach must be authentic,” said D. Scott Karnedy, senior vice president of global sales in a statement. “Smart marketers are transitioning beyond media buys and sponsorships to more holistic programs that are both true to the brand and relevant to the audience. That's what our team will focus on building for our partners.”
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2014 Twilight Concert Series bios
OMAR SOULEYMAN
WEEK 4
JULY 31
Omar Souleyman WITH
DE LUX
Omar Souleyman — the Syrian artist who not only changed the vibe of weddings throughout the Middle East with his Shaabi street sound but also brought it to the West through his notorious late night festival slots — has finally recorded an album. After three compilations and a live release, Wenu Wenu is his first album to be recorded in a studio and was produced by Kieran Hebden (Four Tet). Born in 1966, Souleyman grew up in Ra’s al’-Ayn, a Syrian town in the northeastern region of Jazeera. That’s where he first heard Syrian folk music played on a longnecked lute called a bozouki and rebab, a single-stringed fiddle. He enlisted Rizan Sa’id from a local Kurdish combo in 1996. The pair electrified Souleyman’s acoustic music - playing it harder, faster, louder, and more thrilling than ever before. He became an increasingly prominent act on the local wedding circuit, eventually generating an estimated 500 bootleg recordings and plenty of wild YouTube videos. Dabke is a foot-stomping circle dance
popular throughout the Middle East; in Syria, men and women perform it together. The one-time mason has been updating his native land’s traditional dabke dance music since 1996. Speaking in Arabic through a translator from his - let’s hope - temporary home in nearby Turkey, Souleyman describes Wenu Wenu as being “nearly live.” Clearly delighted by the results, Souleyman tips his keffiyeh to Hebden for capturing the singer and his longtime musical partner, the keyboardist-composer Rizan Sa’id, at their purest, with very little overdubbing. Although he’s received many impressive recent offers, Souleyman says wedding gigs are a thing of the past for him, due in part to the situation in Syria, and that he now prefers to perform in concert. His international audience is expanding, thanks to projects such as his well-received remixes for Björk’s Biophilia, and he’s seen his influence spread around the Middle East. Souleyman characterizes his dabke style as particularly flexible. Where as localized, rural dabke known as baladi is inflexible, Souleyman’s dabke can be played faster or slower, with different words and tunes. “It works with everything,” he says. Title track “Wenu Wenu” is relatively new and, according to Souleyman, a real crowd
pleaser. It’s a four-on-the-floor dynamo, with brain-melting synthesizer accompaniment reminiscent of a space ship landing in the desert. “Ya Yumma,” on the other hand, has been in Souleyman’s repertoire since 1995. According to Souleyman, the hardcharging “Nahy” refers to an older style of poetry in which each stanza contains six lines. And “Khattaba” became a much-covered Arab-world hit after airing on TV in 2006. With words by the poet Madmoud Harbi, Souleyman describes it as a sort of “remix” and points out that the rhythm is baladi rather than shaabi. Souleyman sings in Arabic and Kurdish on the traditional Kurdish song “Warni Warni,” which contains some nifty electronic percussion on top of its technofolk beat. In the mysterious “Mawal Jamar,” Souleyman sings about being willing to walk over hot coals for his beloved, adding that “mawal” is a form of Arabic improvisation. And, finally, “Yagbuni” (a term of endearment from Souleyman’s Jazeera region) ends the album with an electro-shaabi bang. Often described as “Syrian Techno” and recorded primarily live in the studio, Wenu Wenu distills Omar’s live performances into a fireball of Middle Eastern passion and excitement.
WEEK 5
AUGUST 8
Jagwar Ma WITH
FASCINATOR
Jagwar Ma is a musical project, est. Nov 2011 by Jono Ma and Gabriel Winterfield. It all starts with the single “Come Save Me”. A celebration of love and loss, lifted by human harmonies only to be sliced apart by the sharp contemporary programming of the song acting as dagger to the tale. This juxtaposition of voice and electronics being a signature of Jagwar Ma. Their collaboration started in 2010 at a performance by FLRL, the Sydney based kraut-experiment that was “a band without members” and a stage of revolving musicians. Their musical history already well known to each other at the time, Jono from the band Lost Valentinos and Gabriel from Ghostwood. Those shared stages at FLRL shows gave way to studio jams and home recordings, radio frequency manipulation, TR808 patterns, MPCs loops, vintage amps and a treasured 7 inch collection. Jagwar found a soul in and amongst all that electricity. SEE BIOS PAGE 12
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Described as sounding like J-Dilla playing Primal Scream covering the Beatles. In Australia “Come Save Me” has been embraced by Triple J who spun it to the #1 most played spot on the station. In the UK it was released through a new 7’s label started by two A&Rs from the legendary XL Records. In the US the song finds high rotation on airwaves of the lauded KCRW and the bands signs with the Windish Agency. Currently the band is ensconced in a castle in France bouncing beats through the dungeons, singing through its hallowed hallways and breathing life into their debut album for the summer of 2012. The first ever festival appearance in Australia for Jagwar Ma will be the 2013 Big Day Out!
WEEK 6
AUGUST 14
La Santa Cecilia WITH
SERGIO MENDOZA Y LA ORKESTRA
La Santa Cecilia consists of accordionist and requintero Jose “Pepe” Carlos, bassist Alex Bendana, percussionist Miguel Ramirez, and lead vocalist La Marisoul, whose captivating voice sings about love, loss and heartbreak. Their influences range from Miles Davis to The Beatles, Led Zeppelin to Janis Joplin and Mercedes Sosa to Ramon Ayala. Their common love of music and openness to all genres led them to the concept of La Santa Cecilia in 2007 named after the patron saint of musicians. In 2013, the band released their major label debut Treinta Dias (30 Days), which featured a captivating collaboration with fan Elvis Costello on “Losing Game.” Now, just after their GRAMMY win for Best Latin Rock, Urban or Alternative Album, the band presents their new album Someday New. The album features seven new tracks, which include a heartfelt Spanglish rendition of The Beatles iconic “Strawberry Fields Forever”,plus the unforgettable new Mexican classic “Como Dios Manda”; as well as a fresh new radio-edit of their single “Monedita” and the full version of their moving, and militant “ICE - El Hielo.”
WEEK 7
AUGUST 21
The Zombies WITH MYSTIC
BRAVES
The second UK group following the Beatles to score a #1 hit in America, The Zombies infiltrated the airwaves with the sophisticated melodies, breathy vocals, choral back-up harmonies and jazzy keyboard riffs of their 1960’s hit singles like “She’s Not There” and “Tell Her No”. Ironically, the group broke-up in 1968 just prior to achieving their greatest success the chart-topping single “Time of the Season”, from their swan-song album “Odessey & Oracle” (recently ranked #100 in Rolling Stone’s “500 Greatest Albums of All Time”). In the intervening years, while lead singer Colin Blunstone went on to develop an acclaimed solo career, and keyboardist/songwriter Rod Argent rocked ‘70’s arenas with his eponymous band ARGENT, the legend of The Zombies took
LA SANTA CECILIA
on a life of its own. Generations of new bands have cited The Zombies’ work as pop touchstones, including such artists as Neko Case and Nick Cave (who have recorded “She’s Not There” for the popular HBO series True Blood), She & Him, Beck, Belle and Sebastian, The Black Angels, The Fleet Foxes, Beach House and The Beautiful South. Decades later, Blunstone and Argent have resurrected The Zombies, recruiting bassist Jim Rodford (formerly of ARGENT and The Kinks), Rodford’s son Steve on drums, and renowned session guitarist Tom Toomey. 2013 marked a major year for the band, with three U.S. tours (which included six SRO performances during the SXSW Music Conference in Austin, plus stops at NYC’s Central Park SummerStage, Seattle’s Bumbershoot Festival and Milwaukee SummerFest) … the American release of their new album, “Breathe Out, Breathe In” the debut on RollingStone.com & VEVO of their first-ever music video for “Any Other Way"… and the announcement of their nomination to the 2014 Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame. The ten songs that make up their new album, “Breathe Out, Breathe In”, are impeccably crafted; the harmonies are rich, the melodies full, the arrangements exquisite, the organ and piano fresh and the production intuitive. The Huffington Post’s David Wild called the album “inspired” and said “some songs recall the haunting melodic heights of the group’s 1968 masterpiece Odessey and Oracle.”
WEEK 8
AUGUST 28
Lee “Scratch” Perry WITH
MEXICO 68
The man who long ago named himself (and his record label and his band) The Upsetter knows whereof he speaks. As a producer, mixer and artist, Lee “Scratch” Perry has been overturning tradition and confounding conventional wisdom for
more than five decades. In the process, the widely acknowledged father of dub reggae became a major player in Jamaican music and international pop. Born in Jamaica in 1936, Perry began in the music business in the late 1950s, working with the island’s mobile sound systems and such artists as Prince Buster, best known for the ska hit Ten Commandments. Subsequent work assisting famed producers Coxsone Dodd and Joe Gibbs prepped him for his professional coming-out. In 1968, he formed Upsetter Records and, throughout the early ‘70s, issued a profusion of recordings (under his own name and various pseudonyms), pioneering a radical form that utilized reggae rhythms and the loping instrumental “spaghetti Western” style of music featured in Sergio Leone’s neocowboy movies, on cuts like Clint Eastwood and The Return of Django. Concurrent with his own releases, Perry produced numerous reggae artists, including, early on, Bob Marley and the Wailers (Duppy Conqueror, Small Axe). By the mid-’70s, the myth of Lee “Scratch” Perry was commanding as much attention as his innovative productions, as spats with artists, lost tapes and a mysterious fire that burned down his Black Ark studio occupied ardent scene-watchers. Still, Perry continued his onslaught of atmospheric dub releases, next capturing the attention of Britain’s punk movement; Perry even produced tracks for The Clash, who’d covered his production of Junior Murvin’s Police and Thieves on their 1977 debut album. Numerous post-punk bands, most notably John Lydon’s Public Image, created music based on a template first fashioned by Perry. By the mid-’90s, his legacy had spread into rap and hip-hop; the Beastie Boys gave Perry a shout-out on their Ill Communication album and sparked yet another revival of interest in his work. Not slowing down after the turn of the century, Perry won a Grammy for Best
Reggae Album in 2003 with the album Jamaican E.T.. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked Perry #100 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. He teamed up with a group of Swiss musicians and performed under the name Lee Perry and the White Belly Rats, and toured the United States in 2006 and 2007 using the New York City-based group Dub Is A Weapon as his backing band. After meeting Andrew W.K. at SXSW in 2006, Perry invited him to co-produce his album Repentance. The 2008 album featured guest artists including Moby, Ari Up, producer Don Fleming, drummer Brian Chippendale, and bassist Josh Werner, and received a Grammy nomination for Best Reggae Album on the Narnack Records label. In 2008, Perry reunited with Adrian Sherwood on The Mighty Upsetter. Between 2007 and 2010, Perry recorded three albums with British producer, Steve Marshall, at State of Emergency Limited in England. The albums featured performances by Keith Richards and George Clinton. Two of these albums, End Of An American Dream (2007) and Revelation (2010), received Grammy nominations for Best Reggae Album on the MEGAWAVE Records label. In 2009, Perry collaborated with Dubblestandart, on their Return from Planet Dub double album, revisiting some of his material from the 1970s and 1980s, as well as collaborating on new material, some of which also included Ari Up of the Slits. Dubstep collaborations with New York City’s Subatomic Sound System included Iron Devil, Blackboard Jungle Vols. 1 & 2 featuring dancehall vocalist Jahdan Blakkamoore, and Chrome Optimism featuring American filmmaker David Lynch. In 2011, Perry recorded Rise Again with bassist and producer Bill Laswell, with the album featuring contributions from Tunde Adebimpe, Sly Dunbar and Bernie Worrell, and released on Laswell’s M.O.D. Technologies label. In SEE BIOS PAGE 13
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2012, Perry teamed with The Orb to produce The Orbserver in the Star House. Perry remixed the Thor’s Stone single by UK producer Forest Swords in November 2013. Perry recorded an album with Daniel Boyle in London, due to be released in April 2014 as Lee “Scratch” Perry – Back on the Controls. Currently, there are two films made about his life and work: Volker Schaner’s Vision Of Paradise and The Upsetter by American film-makers Ethan Higbee and Adam Bhala Lough and narrated by Benicio Del Toro. In 2010, Perry had his first ever solo art exhibition at Dem Passwords art gallery in Los Angeles, California. The show entitled Secret Education featured works on canvas, paper, and a video installation. Perry is featured as the DJ on the Dub and Reggae radio station Blue Ark in video game Grand Theft Auto V. The station includes a number of dubs by Perry and the Upsetters including Disco Devil and Grumblin’ Dub. In August 2012, it was announced that Perry would receive Jamaica’s sixth highest honour, the Order of Distinction, Commander class, and in October 2013, it was announced that he was to be awarded a Gold Musgrave Medal later that month by the Institute of Jamaica. Perry now lives in Switzerland, where he continues to create unique, categorydefying music. He remains one of the world’s most imaginative sonic architects. CHARLES BRADLEY
WEEK 9
SEPTEMBER 4
OK Go WITH
ALLAH-LAS
Formed as a quartet in Chicago in 1998 and relocated to Los Angeles three years later, OK Go (Damian Kulash, Tim Nordwind, Dan Konopka, Andy Ross) have spent their career in a steady state of transformation. The four songs of the allnew Upside Out EP represent the first preview of Hungry Ghosts, due out in the fall on the band’s own Paracadute. This is the band’s fourth full-length and the newest addition to a curriculum vitae filled with experimentation in a variety of mediums. The band worked with longtime producer and friend Dave Fridmann (Flaming Lips, Weezer, MGMT), while also enlisting a new collaborator in Los Angeles, veteran Tony Hoffer, (Beck, Phoenix, Foster the People) to create their most comfortable and far-reaching songs yet. Building on (and deconstructing) 15 years of pop-rock smarts, musical friendship, and band-ofthe-future innovations the EP, Upside Out, offers a concise overview of forthcoming Hungry Ghosts’ melancholic fireworks (“The Writing’s on the Wall”), basement funk parties (“Turn Up The Radio”), IMAXsized choruses (“The One Moment”), and space-age dance floor bangers (“I Won’t Let You Down”). Drawn from the same marching orders issued to big-hearted happiness creators as Queen, T. Rex, The Cars or Cheap Trick, and a lifetime of mixed tapes exchanged by lifelong music fans, Upside Out is a reaffirmation of the sounds and ideas that brought the band together in the first
place. The four songs provide an assured kick-off to a new sequence of interconnected performances, videos, dances, and wild, undreamt fun. “As the band has evolved over the last 15 years, the creative palette we work with has expanded in so many unexpected and gratifying directions,” says frontman Damian Kulash. “This record feels like it’s the musical manifestation of that — like we can speak in a clearer voice when we are playing in a bigger sandbox. Just as the band’s whole project became clearer to us as we learned to find more homes for our creativity — we triangulated it from more directions. And, I think the music itself has gotten more focused for similar reasons. We went in with fewer preconceptions of who we are or what our sound is, and came out with a record that sounds much more uniquely our own because of it.” Continuing a career that includes viral videos, New York Times op-eds, a major label split and the establishment of a DIY trans-media mini-empire, collaborations with pioneering dance companies and tech giants, animators and Muppets, OK Go continue to fearlessly dream and build new worlds in a time when creative boundaries have all but dissolved.
WEEK 10
SEPTEMBER 11
Charles Bradley WITH
KING JAMES & THE SPECIAL MEN
If you’re looking for a story that best summarizes the last year in the life of Charles Bradley, you’d be hard pressed to find a better one than the night he and his
band showed up in Utopia, Texas to play an outdoor show in the middle of a thunderstorm. “It was just raining, raining, raining,” Bradley recalls. “I walked out onstage, and there were about 800 people there - maybe more - all of them just standing out there in the rain and the mud.” The band settled in and fought their hardest against the elements, but - for a moment, anyway - it seemed that nature was too much for even the mighty Charles Bradley. About halfway through the show, the power went out, leaving both the band and the drenched fans in total darkness. At any other show, that would be understood as the meteorological signal for “Quittin’ Time,” but if there’s one thing the last year of tireless touring before enrapt audiences has proven, it’s that Charles Bradley does not put on typical shows. “I could hear them screaming, ‘Charles Bradley! Charles Bradley we love you,’” Bradley smiles. “And so when the lights came back on, I said, ‘If all of you can stand out there in the rain and get soaking wet because you want to see me perform - to see me do something that I love to do then you know what? I’m gonna get wet, too.’” And with that, Bradley jumped off the stage and into the crowd. “They went completely crazy!” he laughs. “We were laughing. We were hugging. We were getting muddy. It was just love.” That’s his whole persona in a single tiny scene: Charles Bradley, victim of love. Other artists appreciate their audiences, just as many are grateful for them, but few artists love their fans as much and as sincerely as Charles Bradley. By now, his remarkable, against-all-odds rise has been well-documented - how he transcended a bleak life on the streets and struggled
through a series of ill-fitting jobs - most famously as a James Brown impersonator at Brooklyn clubs - before finally being discovered by Daptone’s Gabriel Roth. The year following the release of his debut, No Time For Dreaming, was one triumph after another: a stunning performance at South By Southwest that earned unanimous raves; similarly-gripping appearances at Bonnaroo, Austin City Limits, Newport Folk Festival and Outside Lands (to name just a few); and spots on Year-End Best Lists from Rolling Stone, MOJO, GQ, Pasteand more. Victim of Love, Bradley’s second record, is a continuation of that story, moving past the ‘heartache and pain’ and closer to the promise of hope. “The first record taps into maybe two or three feelings,” explains Thomas Brenneck of Menahan Street Band, Bradley’s producer, bandleader and co-writer. “But the range of emotion on this record is huge. The last record was written by a man living in the Brooklyn projects for 20 years. This record is more than just a poor man’s cry from the ghetto. This time, he’s grateful.” Bradley agrees. “I was singing about all these hardships that I’ve been through. I wanted people to know my struggles first, but now I want them to know how much they have helped me grow.” Drop into any moment of Victim of Love at random and that message is immediately apparent. Where the last record opened with the apocalyptic “The World (is Going Up in Flames), Victim begins “Strictly Reserved For You,” a track that sees Bradley grabbing his girl, jumping in a car and hitting the highway for a romantic getaway. In “You Put The Flame SEE BIOS PAGE 14
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on It,” Bradley sings “My life is gold - you put the flame on it,” backed by a horn chart that sounds like it was lifted from a lost Four Tops single. And on “Victim of Love,” the song that gives the album its name, Bradley sings, “I woke up this morning, I felt your love beside me,” over the kind of gentle acoustic guitar that wouldn’t sound out of place on a classic Neil Young album. Which brings up another point: with the new subject matter comes a broader musical scope. Where Dreaming hewed close to the rough-and-ready R&B sound Daptone has become known for, Victim is stylistically more restless, edging closer into the kind of psychedelic soul The Temptations explored in the early ‘70s. “I’ve been calling it ‘New Direction Daptone,’” enthuses Brenneck. “People are not going to expect this. There’s a lot of psych influences on this record, a lot of fuzz guitar. I’m pushing the band & the arrangements further out, which in turns has to make Charles go further out.” That new direction is most apparent in “Confusion.” Opening with the kind of echo-drenched vocal and charging rhythmic cadence that characterized Curtis Mayfield’s “(Don’t Worry) If There’s a Hell Below, We’re All Going to Go,” Bradley calls down fire on crooked businessmen and duplicitous leaders. “That song is about a lot of those big politicians who think they can make everybody’s decisions
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for them,” says Bradley. “The higher class think they can make up the rules for us. But a lot of those big wigs have never really been down to the harsh life. They don’t know how it feels. So I’m trying to talk to people who are going through those hardships.” As is typical of Bradley, the song comes off not as a roaring jeremiad, but as a deeply-felt note of sympathy for the oppressed and beaten-down. But if the album has a summary statement, it’s “Through the Storm.” Over a deep gospel groove, Bradley expresses his gratitude - to his fans, his friends and to God - for their support, their dedication and their devotion. “When the world gives you love,” he sings, “It frees your soul.” This is the new message of Charles Bradley, the Bradley who has emerged from the heartache stronger and more confident, overflowing with love to share. This is Charles Bradley, victim of love — gratefully returning the joy that has been given to him.
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Mellow groove INTERNATIONAL ACT BRINGS ENTHUSIASTIC CROWDS TO THE PIER
A
perfect summer night welcomed headliner Yuna to the July 17 concert.
WATCHING THE SHOW from the beach tonight? Don't forget to recycle your glass bottles and aluminum cans.
2411 Delaware Avenue in Santa Monica
(310) 453-9677
MICHIGAN 24TH
Santa Monica Recycling Center
CLOVERFIELD
Aluminum Plastic Glass Bi-Metal Newspaper CardboardWhite/Color/Computer Paper Copper & Brass X DELAWARE AVE. 10 WEST
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