Bernstein Would Like to Take You Higher

I finally made it to a River2River event: Steven Bernstein's Millennial Territory Orchestra Plays The Music of Sly & The Family Stone. "Plays the music of" are generally words that strike ennui into the heart of music-lovers, signaling the presence of a---shudder---tribute band, all-too-often with and overenthusiastic singer and embarrassing outfits. And Bernstein is probably overenthusiastic, not infrequently pausing between songs for long, rambling stories about growing up Jewish, Woodstock, and utopian musical hopes. But in fairness, the show was the start of a tribute to Woodstock, and Sly & The Family Stone have been inspiring utopian hopes for a long time.

As part of a Woodstock tribute (seemingly sponsored by the makers of the film The Road To Woodstock, who were out in force passing out fliers to the urban grey-hairs who are pretty much dead center of that biopic's demographic targeting zone), the show focused on the music S&tFS played during their show-stealing performance at Yasgur's farm, which means the hits were well represented. It was a good choice, not least because those songs take very well to the big-band transfer---like the Mingus Big Band, Bernstein's group alternates between brainy deconstructions of a song's musical elements and a full-court press of syncopated volume.

Also on site were a succession of terrific, interesting singers, each determined to bring their own stamp to the classics. Highlights included Shilpa Ray's East Indian punk drone on "Everyday People", Martha Wainwright's god-abandoned gospel keening on "Que Sera Sera", and Dean Bowman busting out his deep-piped cerebral genius freak act all over "Sing a Simple Song". The great Bernie Worrell was on keyboard, and though his instrumental medleys leaned a little heavily towards the jokey, he's a player who's always instinctively understood the jangly jump of the Family Stone's keyboard lines---looking back, the synth that propels The Name of the Band Is Talking Heads sounds not unlike the hyperactive jangling on "I Want to Take You Higher".

Understandably, though, there wasn't much heard from the landmark album "There's a Riot Going On". While we did get the ballad "Family Affair", most of that strange, murky, grim album is pretty much the exact opposite of what you want to hear at an outdoor summer show. It says a lot about my musical tastes that "Riot" is my favorite S&tFS album---it reverses all the principles of funk music, replacing the propulsive crispness that defines the genre with a grim, lurching swirl. Again, the Talking Heads connection---"Riot" was the first album to realize that the tightness of funk tunes could become a prison, and the sound of the singer being buried alive in "Luv 'n' Haight" and "Poet" anticipates the vocalist's paranoid lurking all over "Fear of Music".

Also of note: This was my first time seeing a show at the Castle Clinton space, in Battery Park, and it's quite a charming little venue. It's an enclosed open-air space that seats about 250, and it's a hell of a lot better designed than the average outdoor stage. The ground is well raked, which means that the seats in the back still get good sightlines (better than the seats in front, actually), and although the volume was kept a little on the low side (perhaps out of consideration for the kind of audience drawn to a Tribute to Woodstock show), the enclosure held the sound in nicely. Looks nothing at all like a castle, but 'ey, dis is Amurrica!

David Byrne at Prospect Park

David Byrne's free Brooklyn show, playing the music of the Byrne/Eno collaborations, was a great Brooklyn event, even if the music was only so-so. Old David Byrne is inevitably not young David Byrne, and the need to co-ordinate with a big band and a lot of backup singers only added to his tendency to give the songs a mannered delivery, fussy and calculatedly antic where the original versions sounded genuinely strangled.

But it was still a great evening, not least because of the sheer fall-of-Saigon crowd---the pre-show line started at the 11th street bandshell, extended back to the 15th street entrance, then wrapped around twice. At least twice, that is---I never did manage to find the end of the line. Marty Markowitz, Brooklyn's elected mascot, gave his typical dem, dese, 'n' dose opening speech, which was charming as always (I hope he doesn't really have any power, but he's totally delightful as the political equivalent of Mr. Met).

I wasn't thrilled with the singing, or The David Byrne Modern Dancers (not their actual designation), who boogied around in loose modern-dance-wear while executing what mostly struck me as filler choreography. But it was delightful when Byrne danced along, and any opinion I have must be filtered through the fact that I could only see them in occasional 2-second increments between the heads of everyone else way out beyond the bandshell fence.

And the band had a great funky sound---they truly killed it on "I Zimbra"---and it was amazing to be reminded of just how many hits the Byrne/Eno collaboration produced, including "Once In A Lifetime", "Life During Wartime", and the big encore number, "Burning Down the House". My Life In The Bush of Ghosts remains the most ridiculously ahead-of-its-time record ever, and it's always neat to hear Byrne doing those songs live and singing all the samples, which turns them from collages into surprisingly cohesive songs.

That said, it was a shame that the carefully-planned show didn't give Byrne a chance to note, during the chorus of "Life During Wartime" that nowadays there ain't no Mudd Club nor CBGB. The Mudd Club was an early casualty---the Talking Heads were still playing "Wartime" on the road when it was gone. But while CBGB outlasted most of the bands that played there, the lyrics referencing it em-past-ened the music as surely as all the grade-school kids brought to the show by their parents.