D'Angelo - Black Messiah (2014)

pork sandwich! PORK! SANDWICH!

has anyone seen him live lately? theres a 2nd date in london added and am wondering what his show is like these days before i fork out £50 for seats in the balcony at the back.

he killed SNL

fucking awesome

Yeah, J.K. Simmons as host and D'Angelo as the musical guest is like a lineup pulled straight from my subconscious.

― Johnny Fever, Thursday, 29 January 2015 16:41 Bookmark

http://images2.fanpop.com/image/photos/11000000/Augustus-Hill-oz-hbo-11078298-500-400.jpg

Tried to win over my brother who likes Sly Stone but little current funky stuff to check out the second song "The Charade" on SNL. He watched the video but said he was bored. Oh well.

http://consequenceofsound.net/2015/02/dangelo-gives-powerful-performance-on-saturday-night-live-watch/

:/

D'Angelo is no R&b "crooner."

not to troll but i was unimpressed with the snl performance; took him 2/3 of the song to warm up. he's gotta get into and stay into a groove to go volcanic.

started the day with this album and it's still amazing

Great performances! "Really Love" in particular.

i saw it on tv last night. i would assume the internet-streaming version surpasses the sound quality of the live TV version, which was surprisingly ok but still not great.

i wonder which band throughout the past 40 years of SNL had the most musicians. there were at least 10 musicians in the vanguard. that was the vanguard, right? they seem pretty cool. both guitar player dudes were amazing.

Yeah that was sort of my gist downplaying D's guitar skills upthread. When you have three guitarists on stage, and two of them are those other guys, D'Angelo's not really bringing much to the table. Like, when I saw the Beach Boys a couple of years back, and there were maybe seven guitarists on stage. Sorry, Al Jardine, you're not adding much.

D'Angelo's singing was great, though, even if he seemed a little uncomfortable at first. Surprised Pino has stuck around, because doesn't he have Who tour commitments?

zzz u guys are such a buzzkill

HE WAS WEARING A SERAPE YOU GUYS

his vocals were a little weak on "really love," but he really rallied for "charade"

and yeah he was stylin

loved "The Charade."

he just seemed kinda nervous more than anything, like i think maybe he puts a lot of mental pressure on himself idk

once he stalked the front of the stage during charade he seemed more settled after that

wait i mean really love not charade

i heard really love in public today, it was weird how the string intro rose above everything else, and then p. much the entire rest of the song disappeared into the crowd background noise

i think everyone knew really love would do okay as the first/R&B single, hes always done well with ballads on urban radio. i thought the SNL songs were good, you can tell he was a bit nervous, but i dont mind that - thats more honest. for all the JB and prince posturing on the voodoo tour (weirdly when i saw it, i thought it was the best show ive ever seen, when i heard bootlegs later, i started noticing some of the stuff that was lifted a little too exactly from princes old live stuff), dangelo isnt a showman IMO, so its prob better for him to be thicker round the waist or holding a guitar, and just singing rather than being a song and dance man. that said, im not sure how much playing he was really doing (i found the solo on charade a tad corny, personally, something that would have been cool in 83 but a bit less so now), it seemed like the other two guys (jesse johnson?) were doing all the heavy lifting (it also made me realise again how charade seems to be missing a verse). id personally be happy with him just killing it on the keys but i guess he knows that certain audiences/critics dont take you seriously unless youre holding something with six strings.

yyyyyyyyyeeeesssssss, copped a pair of orchestra tix to the apollo show this weekend
good to be alive

:)

hey forks guess what i hate u

;_;

i'm in really love with u

>:(

haha

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl-jTixt6C0

those are mostly cringey btw. but its interesting just to hear some of the songs stripped down to guitar. 100 deaths and aint that easy in particular sound good. id rather hear someone else singing though.

that screen cap is not promising

14:37

there's a thread where we talked about Morgan James a bit -- she sings a surprisingly good retro soul cover of Maroon 5's "Maps" that has a bunch of hits on YouTube, and she released an album on Epic Records a few months ago with a Prince cover that was on the R&B radio charts a little bit. she's a pretty talented vocalist but obviously not much for original material. if she was gonna cover an album in its entirety maybe BLACK MESSIAH was not the best idea.

that screen cap is not promising

OTM ! there's no way I'm clicking on this !

goddamn it, vinyl was supposed to come out next tuesday just got an email from amazon saying it's indefinitely delayed :/

Maybe this guitar guy can help me figure out the chords to The Charade

does get awkward when shes singing parts of 1000 deaths and charade. :|

32.24 underlining my pamplemousse misgivings about the door
which, again, D'Angelo can pull off but not these guys

i think dangelos songs are so wedded to his vocal style (and also as they arent always that 'robust' songwriting wise) its kinda pointless anyone trying to cover them

Who else is doing this tonight? Jord?

how was it forks

yeah forks

First and foremost it was LOUD; my #unnamedsource informed me D showed up very late for soundcheck (i was shocked, shocked) and it showed. I spend a lot of time seeing shows standing right by the amps so i'm not easily impressed by sound overkill but this was near Sunn O))) levels. It's always possible my seat position had something to do with it but I got arena level sound in a venue where the music carries too well for that volume to be necessary or desirable. While the band was universally exceptional, I found the mix muddy and nearly unreasonably bass heavy; good as Palladino was, he could be oppressive. I was barely able to make out the backup singers or the keyboards through most of the show and there were several times where it took D's first vocal for me (and, based on audience reaction, most everyone) to realize just what song was playing.

Second, and equally important, D'Angelo sounded EXCELLENT. He was in prime voice: no butterflies, no trepidation and no crowd patter (though, to be fair, he opened with the first four songs or so more or less in the dark... starting with "Prayer" was a pretty ballsy move), dapping the front row, totally driving the band, showing astonishing range and charisma. I went with my lady, who had minimal exposure to D's music outside of my obsessive listening habits, and she left immensely impressed with him as a performer. He did most of Messiah in the first half of the show (no "Betray My Heart" sadly), leaving older hits for the second half.

Third, it was long (about two and a half hours, with two lengthy encores) and occasionally sloppy with exploratory, loopy funk jams that sometimes wobbled without landing. That was a fair tradeoff for the truly memorable moments when they soared and exploded: a ten minute attack on One Mo'Gin, the same amount of time for Sugah Daddy, fifteen minutes on Back to the Future and (the show's best moments) a completely ecstatic and southern-fried Chicken Grease followed by a knockout finale of It's Done into How Does It Feel that ended with D emptying the stage until he played alone on keyboards, leading the crowd in a singalong on the chorus.

The BK Bowl show was an intimate, stripped down living-room show with a focus on where D'Angelo's been; the Apollo concert was an over-the-top rock god jamband blowout spotlight on an artist who still has a lot more to say. Both felt important; both are gonna stick with me a long time.

caramanica came at it from a different angle but i think we kinda had similar takes
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/09/arts/music/dangelos-apollo-theater-show-featured-signature-songs-and-style.html

Cool thanks for the report
Bummer about the mix, bands need to get over their obsession with stage volume

word. do you wear earplugs at these shows, forks?

Yeah, I've been doing earplugs at basically every show I go to since about 2010 when tinnitus started seeming like a real possibility

reviews coming in:
http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/the-juice/6465528/dangelo-launches-second-coming-tour-with-mesmerizing-apollo-theater
http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2015/02/08/inside-dangelos-triumphant-return-to-the-apollo/
http://nypost.com/2015/02/08/dangelo-brings-the-funk-to-the-apollo/

and cell phone videos are on:
http://allhiphop.com/2015/02/08/watch-dangelos-performance-at-the-apollo/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NR5fiYNoiRQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMei6HOqrek
these videos making me wonder if my placement wasn't contributing at least somewhat to bass overload; was not this clear from where i was sitting... which i think was just about the same distance on mezzanine, just stage left not right.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJP0B0YeBeY

huh, i think it maybe WAS audience placement because this must've been shot by the guy in the row in front of me; it's exactly the angle we were at
This is what the show sounded like to me (though with MUCH louder bass); passable but muddy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lk5jf_zLvAM

anyways, i def want a board tape really really bad

hi, Jason King:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2015/02/10/385243069/dangelo-at-the-apollo-we-were-all-here-before