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Hi.
Without asking you guys if you want to hear this or not..
The following is an article taken from Rolling Stone on Living Colour.
Taken without permission from Rolling Stone magazine, Issue 549,
April 6th, 1989.
*anything surrounded by asteriks means italics.
LIVING COLOUR TURNS TO GOLD
*A trailblazing black rock band scores*
Vernon Reid is a proud man. After six yars of talking loud and
getting nowhere, the hard-rock guitarist has finally proved his
point. Even as he paces about a San Francisco hotel room, *Vivid*,
the debut album by his band, Living Colour, is Number Sixteen with
a bullet on the pop charts. Sales have zoomed past the 500,000
mark.
Reid hopes that his triumph will have far-reaching consequences.
The members of Living Colour - lead vocalist Corey Glover, bassist
Muzz Skillings, drummer Will Calhoun and Reid - are black, and the
New York-based group is the first black rock band to attract a large
mainstream audience since the demise of Sly and the Family Stone
in the early Seventies. Reid thinks the record industry should
sign numerous black rock bands. "It's definitely buttonholing time,"
he says with a sly grin.
Scattered about the hotel room, his band mates agree. "*This* puts
the record industry on notice," says Glover, whose long black hair
is tied in a ponytail.
"I hope it brings about a change," adds Calhoun, who has an immense
kaffiyeh draped around his shoulders. "And I hope it's not just
a black-rock-versus-R&B kind of thing. I hope it broadens the whole
scene. And I hope it broadens the mentality of the presidents at
the record labels."
Although it's been on the *Billboard* albums chart for more than
six motnhs, *Vivid* really took off in late December, thanks in
part to a much-aired video of the tough rocker "Cult of Personality."
Suddenly the hard-rock crowd is showing up at Living Colour shows
en masse and stopping Reid on the street for autographs. Van Halen
singer Sammy Hagar is so high on Living Colour that he would like
to produce the band's next album.
"I think back to where we were last summer," says Skillings. "Minimal
radio play, almost no video play. Almost selling our record by
hand, audience by audience, city by city."
At first, says group comanager Jim Grant, Epic Records didn't know
what to do with Living Colour. One college rep for the label even
tried to conceal the group's race by refusing to provide a photo
of the band to a student newspaper. "The rep said it wasn't going
to help get people to the show," Grant says.
At the afternoon sound check at the Stone, the San Francisco rock
club wehre the band will be headlining that night, Reid is onstage,
playing a bluesy riff on an ESP guitar that looks as if it had had
yellow, green, orange and blue fluorescent paint dripped on it.
As he shifts into a wild, Hendrix-inspired frenzy of white noise,
Skillings and Calhoun join in, and the jam builds to a fury.
Dubbed "the black Led Zeppelin" by England's *New Musical Express*,
Living Colour is more than a badass hard-rick band. There is a
political and social wareness to much of its material, and its sound
includes metal, punk, funk and jazz references. Reid's "Which Way
to America?" - contrasting the America see on TV with hs perception
of real life - features the sarcastic chant "Where is my picket
fence?/My long, tall glass of lemonade?/Where is my VCR, my stereo,
my T.V. show?"
Sarcasm notwithstanding, the members of Living Colour found their
tastes well within the mainstream while growing up. "When I was
a kid, everyone I knew was in a garage working out rock songs,"
Skillings says after the sound check. "Led Zeppelin, early Foghat,
Grand Funk Railroad. We put on the *Woodstock* album and learned
all the songs off it. We're not an isolated thing. The fact that
Living Colour has made it this far is unique, but the fact that we
exist is not."
"What I hope our success is doing is encouraging other black rock
bands to stick with it," Reid says, "because this is the result
of six years of hard work. Other bands have told me our success
is giving them the feeling that it's possible."
Reid rattles off a list of black rock bands he thinks should get
a shot: Uptown Atomics, Eye and I, J.J. Jumpers, the Deed, the
Veldt, Harvey, Follow for Now and 24/7 Spyz. "It's not about 'Now
we got through the door, close the door behind us,'" Reid says.
Rather, he'd like to see Living Colour as a trailblazer.
Before forming the band, Reid played in alternative-jazz groups
like Defunkt and Ronald Shannon Jackson and the Decoding Soceity.
But it wasn't until Mick Jagger stepped in, that doors began to
open for Living Colour. "We were a band like any other band playing
at CBGBs," Reid says. "One night Mick Jagger comes in, checks us
out, and the ball starts to roll from there."
Jagger subsequently produced two songs - "Glamour Boys" and "Which
Way to America?" But even Jagger couldn't guarantee a record deal.
"People were skeptical," says Jim Grant. "'Mick Jagger? So what?'
they said. I'd call some labels and say I had two demos Mick Jagger
had just produced and not get called back."
That night the hard-rock crowd turns out in full force to see Living
Clour at the Stone. Longhaired dudes in black leather with
bleached-blond, spandex-dipped girlfriends hanging on their arms.
Plenty of scruffy white teenagers who have driven in from the suburbs.
"Most people don't give a shit about the color of their skin," says
Living Clour fan Paul Balbas before the show. "As long as they
can rock, no one cares." His sentiments are echoed by other membrs
of the audience.
Taking the stage, Living Colour blasts off with its metallic rocker
"Middle Man." For much of the set, Reid remains stationary, bending
over his guitar to fire off round after round of high-speed riffing.
While Skillings and Calhoun hold down an immense, booming, rock-steady
groove, Glover works the stage like and inspired cross between Robert
Plant and former Black Flag singer Henry Rollins, tossing back his
long mane of hair, then throwing himself into the audience during
"Which Way to America?" and riding on a sea of fans.
What half a million Living Colour fans appear to be saying is that
great rock is great rock, and that it is time to end segregation
at record labels and on radio and let the music speak for itself.
"It will be interesting to see how the business reacts," says
Skillings. "Are they going to try to clone what's happened, or
are they going to dig deeper and understand that this band made
it because we have something that's different?"
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LIVING COLOUR'S TIME IS NOW - But the Black Rock Coalition's Best-Known
Band Wouldn't Think of Resting on Its Laurels.
Taken without permission from RS mag
First, there was the gold record. Vernon Reid had spent nearly six
years slamming his head against a brick wall of indifference, paying
exorbitant dues as he fought for his inalienable right to rock. So
when he was finally handed a plaque commemorating a half-million sales
of Living Colour's first album, *Vivid*, Reid - the band's headstrong
founder and virtuoso guitarist - almost broke down and cried.
"I was thinking about all the things I'd been through to get this,"
Reid says a little sheepishly, recalling the postshow ceremony athte
Palace, in Los Angeles, back in February 1989. "Breaking up with
girlfriends, guys in the band leaving - all of that. I was really
close to tears."
Then there was the time Casey Kasem nearly sent Reid into hysterics.
"I was in a hotel room in Florida, and I heard Casey Kasem come on the
radio and talk about us on *American Top Forty*," Reid says. "*That*
was mind-blowing, especially when you think about where we're coming
from."
But Reid insists that as a measure of success - of the true impact and
import of Living Colour's hard-fought black-rock crusaade and that of
the Black Rock Coalition, the black-music-activist group that Reid
cofounded in 1985 - nothing beats the imperial seal of approval that
he, singer Corey Glover, bassist Muzz Skillings and drummer Will
Calhoun received last fall from the self-professed "architect of rock &
roll" and black-rock daddy of 'em all, Little Richard. The band,
then doing opening-act honors on the Rolling Stones' *Steel Wheels*
tour, was about to drive out of the Los Angeles Coliseum after
finishing its set when Richard, who was backstage, walked up and
introduced himself with characteristic flamboyance: "Hi! I'm one of
those glamour boys you been singin' about!"
"That was heavy," Reid says, laughing. "We were surprised that he even
knew us."
The next day, Richard invited Living Colour up to his room at the Hyatt
on Sunset Boulevard for a chat. For the band, though, it was more like
a private audience with the pope. Even now, the band members are
reluctant to divulge the specific nature of their conversation. Glover
says simply, "We were so awe-struck, we were catatonic."
Richard himself is anything but, especially on the subject of Living
Colour. "I was telling them to make sure they sign all the checks," he
says, cackling with glee. "And to play from the heart, which they do.
And to give your all. If you don't give your all, you don't give
nothing, and Living Colour does give their all."
"They play with feeling and conviction," continues Richard, who
contributed a dynamite guest rap to the sidesplitting raver "Elvis is
Dead" on Living Colour's new album, *Time's Up*. "Do you understand
me? They are not just saying words to be saying them. I think black
people need to support them as well as white people, to realize the
contribution that they are making at this time. The same thing that
startedin the Fifties with me, they are taking it through the Nineties.
And God bless their souls. They are keeping it alive."
"You talk about moments," says Reid. "That was *the* moment. Hendrix
played in Little Richard's band. He was the cat who did 'Good Golly
Miss Molly,' who turned concerts into riots. Having Little Richard
say, 'You guys are doing the right thing' - if I needed validation,
that's it. Everything else really don't mean sh*t."
"An early gig?" Vernon Reid toys pensively with his chopsticks in a
Japanese restaurant in New York City's East Village and casts his mind
back to the bad old days of the mid-Eighties - before gold records and
Casey Kasem, when Living Colour was playing the 2:00 a.m. cleanup slot
at CBGB and Reid's dream of a black rock band with sociopolitical heart
and jazz-funk flair was getting a universal thumbs-down in
record-company A&R offices all over town.
"Okay, this is before the current lineup," Reid says. "We were at
Seventh Avenue South [a defunct jazz club], and that night was so bad
that eh night manager came up to me and said, 'You guys had so few
people here that if I really wanted to make an issue of it, you owe
*me* money. Ha, ha ha!' The sound of his laughing echoing down the
stairs as he walked away - man, that was a really low ebb.
"I had a vision though," Reid continues. "I believed in the music, and
I always believed that if it got the chance to get out there, that
people would like it. I didn't put a number on it, though. Because my
scale of things was all very small." For example, Reid looked up to
the venerable avant-jazz group the Art Ensemble of Chicago. "They were
self-contained, and they'd managed to keep that going," he says. "To
me, that was success."
What happened to Reid, 32, and the other members of Living Colour over
the past tree years isn't just success, it's sweet justice. Originally
given a lukewarm welcome by a music industry that widely believed that
ablack rock & roll band's album was a contradiction in terms, Living
Colour's 1988 Epic debut, *Vivid*, eventually sold 2 million copies
worldwide, mostly on the strength of the band's incendiary live shows
and heavy MTV video play. The album yielded two Top Forty singles,
"Cult of Personality" and "Glamour Boys." "Cult" won a Grammy for best
hard-rock performance, and the band also walked away with an armful of
statuettes at th 1989 MTV Video Music Awards, including Best New
Artist.
"I always felt, in the beginning, when we first finished *Vivid*, that
it would at least go gold, with the right promotion," Will Calhoun
says. "It was the timing, the image and the fact that these four guys
were not gonna go *back* - that these guys were not gonna soften up their
sh*t. There was no sign of compromise in the music."
The band was not prepared, however, for the speed with which its new
album, *Time's Up*, took off. It entered *Billboard's* album chart at
Number Eighty-two and vaulted into the Top Twenty the following week.
According to Living Colour comanager Jim Grant, Epic initially shipped
400,000 copies of the album; before the week was out, the reorders were
coming in. What's more, rock radio - which was last to get on the
bandwagon for *Vivid* - embraced the leadoff single, "Type," right out
of the box. The track went to the Top Ten in AOR airplay.
"It's sometimes hard to tell how much our success has to do with our
own work and how much it's the trapings and the business around it,"
Muzz Skillings, 26, says warily. "Like what if MTV suddenly stopped
playing our videos? It probably wouldn't be as drastic as if they
stopped playing, say Motley Crue's videos. But it would definetly have
an effect. I mean, we can handle that. We'd just start over. But it
is a sobering thought."
The challenge now, Ried says, is "making sure that the band still
represents what I wanted it to be in the begining, that it doesn't
become something it was never meant to be, a monster that eats people
up - I want to keep it real."
So in making *Time's Up*, Ried says, "the only pressure I felt was that
I didn't want us to look over our shoulders and say, 'Oh, God, now we
having something to lose - we have to protect our thing.'" In fact,
*Time's Up* is an album wholly about risk and self-determination, from
the defiant hardcore whirl of the opening title track to the climactic
majesty of Reid's closing hymn, "This Is the Life," a Zepplin-like
tract of stern but hopeful realism. In "Under Cover of Darkness,"
Glover and guest rapper Queen Latifah address the high price of serious
romantic commitment in the age of AIDS; Calhoun's "Pride," which rocks
with magnum "Cult"-style force is a simple, sobering celebration of
African American dignity.
Musically, Living Colour's refusal to simply fall back on the
funk-metal meal ticket of *Vivid* illustrates the band members's
deep-rooted spirtual resolve. They skid all over the black-rock map,
zigzagging from the fusion meltdown in the midsection of "Information
Overload" to the bedrock Memphis sould of "Under Cover of Darkness" and
the sweet Soweto hop of "Solace of You." There are also a number of
striking spoken-word and sound-effets links placed strategically
throughout the record, most notably "History Lesson," which features
samples from an old black-history record starring actors Ossie Davis,
Ruby Dee and James Earl Jones. The band's producer, Ed Stasium, says
he was extremely pleased when his teenage son told him that listening
to *Time's Up* "was like reading a book."
"The common thread that holds that record together is that it's not
about conformity, it's about individualism," says Glover. "If you find
your own individualism and you look for that inner truth, then you have
what it takes to move on in this life, to move on in any direction, to
get yourself up and out of whatever dregs you're in. That's what makes
you *you* and that's what makes us all interact and move. And become a
people that move."
"That's the secret of the blues," Ried adds. "People think the blues
is about being miserable. Gospel, too. Actually, it's about changing
that into something else, exorcising those thins that bother you. And
we try to take a broader perspective. Some of the songs take a broad
view of what life is, not so much dealing with the specific issue of
being black in America. That is definetly a thread that will be in our
records. But something like 'This is the Life' is about a situation
that anyone can be in."
Indeed, Ried is surprised, and rather bummed, that some reviewers have
mistaken the explicit urgency of the lyrics and the jump-cut musical
frenzy of *Time's Up* forhumorless, hard-rock didacticism -
high-decibel pulpit pounding for the Sound-Bite Generation. "The
purpose is not to bludgeon people - like I've read criticism of 'Elvis
is Dead,' Reid says, referring to the album's hilarious punk-funk swipe
at the fanatic deification of Presley and the cold exploitation of his
legacy. "One critic took issue with the line 'A black man taught him
how to sing/ And then he was crowned king.' He said, 'Well, what about
his hillbilly roots?' Look, Sam Phillips said, 'If I can find a white
man to sing like a Negro, I'll make a million dollars.' He was very
clear. He wasn't talking about Elvis's hillbilly roots.
"Part of it is who defines things," continues Reid. "It's not enough
for the powers tha be to love Elvis, for him to be *their* king of rock
& roll. Elvis has to be the king of rock & roll for everybody. And
that is somethiing I cannot swallow.
"part of what we're dong is just dealing with the fabric of our lives,
the things we see happening around us," Reid says. "Like that line in
'Type': 'We are the children of concrete and steel.' This isn't the
Sixties or the Seventies. This is the Nineties, and people are not
kidding. Innocence is a thing of the past. no one is innocent. No
one can afford to waste the time.
"To me, that's a drag. You see kids, ten and nine years old, what
hey're talking about, the level of what they have to deal with. It's
straight up. They've been forced to know what's at stake. So by the
time you become an adult, you're a hard case."
Has it made him a hard case?
Reid pauses. "I don't know," he says. "I'm just stubborn. If I get
knocked back down, I just get up and go for it again."
Will Calhoun used to get real bugged during interviews. "In the
beginning, everyone wanted to hear the story that we were four ghetto
boys playing outside on 125th Street at some broken down store,"
Calhoun says, "and Mick Jagger came of the the store and saw us one
day, bought us all fresh instruments and we became great."
Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth. "We come from
working-class familites," Calhoun, 26, says emphatically. "Our parents
busted their ass to get us where we are. Everyone went to college on
some level." The band certainly owes Jagger a sizable debt of
gratitude for his early patronage; he produced the 1987 demos of
"Glamour Boys" and "Which Way to America?" that eventually netted the
group its Epic deal. (The performances were so hot they were included,
in remixed form, on *Vivid*) But Living Colour is the singular product
of hard knocks, disparate influences, indomitable racial pride and an
uncommon commitment that, in Reid's case, goes back more than a decade.
"Not that I'm more committed than they are," Reid says of the other
members, "because they made the sacrifice, too. But the idea for Living
Colour had been with me eery since I started playing the guitar, for
fifteen, sixteen years.
"It was," he notes a little wearily, "a real process."
Born in London of West Indian parents and raised in Brooklyn, Reid was
already a well-known and respected player on the New York scene -
equally at home in the progressive-jazz and postpunk camps - when, in
1983, he started the group that would eventually become Living Colour.
The band, featuring drummer Greg Carter and bassist Alex Mosely, was
originally a side project that rehearsed and gigged when Reid wasn't on
the road with the Decoding Society, drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson's
harmolodic jazz-rock group. Personnel shifts were frequent. The
band's first lead singer was a woman, D.K. Dyson, now with the highly
touted Black Rock Coalition group Eye and I. Acclaimed jazz pianist
Geri Allen was another early member.
By 1985, when Reid left the Decoding Society, his new band had a name
(inspired by the old NBC-TV announcement "The following program is
brought to you in living color," amended with a British spelling) and
Reid had a clear idea of what he wanted Living Colour to be: a
full-tilt *rock* band celebrating the continuing vitality and enduring
promise of Robert Johnson, Billie Holliday, Bo Diddley, Sly Stone,
Ornette Coleman and Bad Brains (to name but a few), with the muscle and
volume of Led Zeppelin. Writing "Funny Vibe," the savage cocktail of
jackhammer funk and edgy Hendrixian metal that later opened side 2 of
*Vivid*, was a major turning point, Reid says: "It was the first song
written in what would be the Living Colour vein, mixing two different
kinds of music together."
The words - "No I'm not gonna hurt you/No I'm not gonna harm you/And I
try not to hate you/So why you want to give me that/Funny Vibe!" -
spelled out with machine-gun eloquence Reid's rage and frustration in
communiating his vision to a rigid, unapologetic music industry rife
with racial stereo typing and de facto discrimination. In the fall of
'85, he channeled that rage and frustration into establishing the Black
Rock Coalition, a black-music advocacy collective dedicated to total
creative freedom and achieving uninhibited access to the marketplace
and media. Now in its fifth year, the BRC boasts a membership of
thirty bands and 175 individuals as well as a newly formed Los Angeles
chapter and a busy agenda of concert presentations, recording projects
and awareness events. Back then, Reid says, "I was tired of freaking
out, and when I heard other people freaking out, I said, 'Something has
to be done'".
Ironically, the sense of unity and confidence fostered by the BRC had a
crucial effect on Living COlour's personnel and the band's own strength
of will. Muzz Skillings, a native of St. Albans, Queens, who had
played with hard-rock, jazz and salsa groups, joined the band after
meeting Reid at a BRC meeting. Calhoun, a Bronx-born graduate of the
Berklee School of Music who toured with Harry Belafonte, played with
the Black Rock Coalition Orchestra before he signed on in 1986. And
Corey Glover, who was introduced to Reid at a birthday party back in
late 1982 (Reid was impressed withGlover's soulful rendition of "Happy
Birthday"), could relate all too well to Reid and the BRC's war of
prejudice because of his own experiences as an actor.
"The first time I went down to meet an agent, they had me read some
copy, and they said, "Too ethnic,'" says Glover, 25. "And my mother
was an English teacher at the time. If I spoke any less than perfect,
I'd hear about it. Then, about a year and a half later, I did this
radio commercial for some allover body scent. The guy came out of the
control room and said, 'It's just not black enough. Could you make it
blacker?" What do you want me to do, slap it on? That was the rudest
thing I'd ever heard."
Glover - who landed the role of Francis, the smartaleck soldier in
Olvier Stone's *Platoon*, before he joined Living Colour in late '85 -
admits that he current lineup had its share of growing pains, in large
part because of Reid's dual duties as bandleader and BRC president and
a lingering public perception that Living Colour was just Reid and
sidemen. "In New York, people thought of Living Colour as Vernon's
band, which in a way it was," Glover says. "And the first video,
'Middle Man,' was too disjointed. It didn't show us as an entity,
interacting enough. Long after the first album was out, people still
though of this as totally Vernon's thing."
Which Reid insists it isn't: "Living Colour definetly started out in
the beginning as a vehicle for me to express myself. But I really
enjoyed what other people would bring into it. 'Middle Man' is Corey's
words and my music. And I like the way that happened. And it grew from
there."
In late 1987, with their Epic Records deal practically in the bag, the
members of Living Coloru formalized their realtionship with al etter of
agreement that, Gover says, "gave us a united fron in dealing with the
outside world."
"For example," Glover says, "one of the items in the document was that
we were a *band* and that we all had a voice, and a vote, in making
decisions. But Vernon would be the executor for the rest of the band,
the principal negotiator, because he was the founder."
The band also established its own corporation, W.T.F.F. Inc., which
stands for What the F*ck Factor. "It's when things work, but in a
strange kind of way," Glover says. "You do it any kind of way to get
something going. It's just in keeping with the Malcolm X philosophy:
'By any means necessary.'"
It was the classic black man's nightmare. Corey Glover was walking out
of a movie theater in Brooklyn Heights not too long ago when a police
car screeched to a halt literally at his feet with its lights blazing
and siren screaming. "Two wheels of a police car get up on the
sidewalk," Glovers says, "and then it's 'Hey, you're Corey Glover,
aren't you? You're in that band Living Colour!'
"I'm going, 'Oh God, don't ever do that again! You scared the sh*t out
of me.' The reality of it is that my first thought was to 'assume the
position', you know? Because I am a black man, the first thing I think
of if there are sirens or something is, they're after me. It's scary."
For Living Colour, writing and singing about the American black
experience is no more an abstract exercise than it was for Muddy
Waters, Duke Ellington or James Brown. Each member of the band has the
perosnal experiences and the emotional scars to prove it. And if you
think the success of *Vivid* has softened the pain, think again. Just
last year, the popular hardrock magazine RIP published a cover photo of
the members of Living Colour with their heavy-metal buddies in Anthrax.
One disgruntled reader sent a copy of the issue back to the magazine's
office - with the four Living Colour faces burned out.
"You know, we're not raising the issues so much as the people are
reacting to us, because of their isms and schisms," says Skillings.
"And it's funny, because I used to go through life really ignoring it.
Literally saying, 'It's their problem if they want to be stupid or
small-minded.' But I've been thrown in situations where I've had to
deal with it."
Like the bus driver who worked for Living Colour on one of the band's
recent tours. "I know he was a closet racist," says Calhoun. "You
know, we're allyoung black guys from New York City, and he had the vibe
when we first got ont he bus. He didn't always have the wheels
polished and cleaned, he didn't always have the bunk open so you could
put your bags in. He gave us all the keys and said, 'Put the sh*t in
there, when you're done, lock it.' You know what I mean?
"But after a while, he started to change, man," Calhoun adds with a
smile. "At the end he was like 'I'm gonna miss you guys, and by the
way, can you sign a poster for my daughter?'"
There was no happy ending, though, to the public war of words between
Axl Rose and Vernon Reid when Guns n' Roses joined Living Colour for
four shows last October at the Los Angeles Coliseum on the Rolling
Stones' *Steel Wheels* tour. During a live radio interview on opening
day, Reid and Calhoun were asked for their opinion about Rose's
invectives agains "niggers," "faggots" and "immigrants" in the infamous
*G n' R Lies* song "One in a Million". "We basically said we didn't
dig it because the labeling of people is not cool," Reid says. "It
reduces people."
That night, Rose responded from the stage. "When I use the word
*nigger*, I don't necessarily mean a black person," he said according
to a report in the *Village Voice*. "I don't give a crap what color
you are as long as you ain't some crack-smoking piece of sh*t. All you
people calling me a racist, shove your head up your f*cking ass."
The next evening, during Living Colour's set, Reid stated his case
simply but articulately for the Gunner's hometown fans: "Look, if you
don't have a problem with gay people, then don't call them 'faggots'.
If you don't have a problem with black people, then don't call them
'niggers'. I never met a nigger in my life. Peace." Living Colour
then roared into, appropriately enough, "Cult of Personality."
"What scared us the most," Glover says of the incident now, "was that
when he [Rose] said these things, the audience roared. No matter what
he said, the audience roared. That's what we were trying to say - this
is the kind of control you have over people and the things you say
affect people. And to say these things uninformed, and to have people
take it as gospel, is scary."
"Leading people is a perilous business," Reid says, and no less so for
Living Colour. "They talk a lot about rock stars growing up in public.
And that's kind of it for us, working out our relationship to America,
trying to deal with our lives in America, as confusing as *that* is.
"And part of that is in our music," contunies Reid. "When we get to the
bottom of things, there's something universal there. When I say our
lives in America, I'm talking about being African American, and beyond
that - with respect to people who want the country to live up to its
own Constitution, as citizens of the country.
"But the other thing is, it's not just a grim business. We have a
great amount of fun. It may seem real dour, but we have a great time
with each other on top of it. And that's the main thing. If it wasn't
fun, if it ws all polemics, it would be ... *phew!* You have to laugh.
You go to, man."
For example, over dinner a few weeks ago, the band was having a good
yuk about the big helium "floozy" balloons that were inflated during
"Honky Tonk Women" on the Stones' tour. "Man, Will has a great idea
for our show when we go into those big places," Skillings said,
cackling.
"Yeah," Calhoun aid with an impish grin. "We'll have these big
balloons of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X on either side of the
stage. And at the end of the show, we can have them come together and
shake hands!"
This has to be some kind of *deja vu* for Vernon Reid. It's a Tuesday
night at CBGB, the place is practically a tomb, and a Black Coalition
band is up onstage, blasting away with all its heart and might for
about a dozen fans, most of them BRC compatriots, including Reid.
It was only three or four years ago that Living Colour was the band up
there, defiantly broadcasting its sound and message to a small but
hardy congregation of local fans and BRC faithful. Tonight, though,
it's a killer biracial trio from Atlanta called No Walls, who were
discovered by Reid while he was on the Stones tour. The group's black
singer-guitarist, William DuVall, had passed a demo tape to Reid
backstage. "I listened to it, and it just sucked me into it," says
Reid, who subsequently brought the grup into the BRC fold and helped
arrange a week's worth of New York shows, including this one.
Reid's enthusiasm is well justified. No Walls' CBGB set is a brilliant
collision of sinewy punk attack, angular jazz-fusion maneuvers and
catchy art-pop songwriting, like psychedelicized Prince in a
Mahavishnu-Minutemen mood. There are hints of Living Colour's metallic
moxie in there as well, although DuVall says that he, bassist Henry
Schroy and drummer Matthew Cowley have been influenced not so much by
Living Colour's sound as by its example. "It felt so good just to see
them make it," Du Vall says after the show, "to know that someone with
a different concept, who went through many of the same things we are
going trough, could go all the way. That's so important."
I'm in contact with guys in bands all the time, and the success of hte
first record idd mean a lot," Reid says. "Certainly it mean a lot to
black musicians coming up. 'Here's somebody doing something different,
and beating the odds.'
"A lot of things have *not* changed," Reid continues. "And frankly,
I'm very disappointed. I would love to have a custom label, a boutique
record label. Because so much stuff is being missed. I hate it when I
hear things like 'Oh, I don't know about he songs, I don't know
about this or that.' Because it's the same stuff they said about Living
Colour. They say the same things over and over. And then they'll turn
around to me and say, 'Oh, but I knew Living Colour would happen.' It's
*jive*, it's really jive."
It galls him especially because he's seen the future of black rock ,
and it looks damn good. "When 'Cult of Personality' hit, I found
myself talking to twelve-year-olds and eleven-year-olds," Reid says.
"They'd picked up on the album from seeing the video. Which was very
important to me. It means their conception of rock & roll is going to
include something that's not the same old stuff. In a few years,
they're gong to be talking about the things they first listened to, and
it's going to be Living Colour, Tracy Chapman, whatever.
"It's interesting, too, because the song is about *that*," Reid
continues. "That's the weird things. The song is about fame, the
machinery of fame. On one level, it's about leaders, people being led.
But it's also about being trapped. Because in a certain sense, those
kind of people are trapped."
Reid isn't worried abou that though. "You get trapped," he says, "only
if you say things you don't mean. I mean everything I say. You can't
be trapped by the truth".
F.
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