J*Davey @The Canal Room, NYC

On Wednesday night I went to see the supa hyped, totally buzzed about West Coast band J*Davey. I've been so curious to see this afropunk duo from La-La Land ever since I read about them here. The article made them sound so fresh, damn near revolutionary in their approach to music that nothing was going to keep me from seeing them this past Wednesday (yes I drank the Fader-aid)-- not a supposed new episode of Lost; not Gladys making her monthly visit-- Nada! My uptown homie Latasha rolled with me for support-- she had never heard of them, but was curious to see some potentially new hotness.

They were supposed to go on at 11pm but didn't hit the stage until 11:35, which meant all the folks that arrived at 9 and 9:30 had been meandering around the cash bar for like 2 hours and had nothing, but foam in the bottom of their Corona bottles long before the lights dimmed on stage. L & I got there around 10:30 and even we were totally exasperated by show time partly because we worked all day, but mostly because the DJ spinning beforehand was awful. Her transitions were abrupt and non-rhythmic and her song selection was wacky.

When Brook D'Leau and Briana Cartwright, nee Jack Davey hit the stage I was relieved that she looked as stylish as she did in Fader and in the pics I had seen from her performance at The Roots pre-Grammy jam session and not jacked like the shots of her in this month’s Urb. Of course it was hard for me to focus on her style much less her set, because in the background there was a porno playing. Yep, they played their entire set against a screen of pornography. And yeah I get it. They are a fresh, cutting-edge ultra sexy band and to play a set of somewhat deliciously funky joints with someone getting head as your backdrop is tre edgy, right? Uuuhhhh, not quite! It was tre distracting, especially if, like me, you’ve never seen the group and you're only familiar with one of their songs, and especially if you’ve only seen like two skin flicks in your life. It's like listening to a politician speak, but his fly is open. Who can concentrate on campaign promises when, as Latasha abruptly pointed out 15 minutes into their set, they're competing against double penetration scenes (that were blurred but not enough to keep our eyes from popping wide open)? This is what Jack had to say about the porn:

okay, so 2 days before the show, cat from URB hit me & asked if we wanted anything projected during our performance, y'know, maybe some old home videos or whatever. i instantly got this idea of blurred silhouetted bodies moving together, so i suggested porn...blurred so folks wouldn't be able to make out exactly what was goin on, but they'd get the point that some shit was goin on. i wanted the color contrast completely saturated. i had it all mapped out in my head. the porn would be an interesting twist because i'm already aware that once i stepped on stage all eyes would be focused on me...people would listen to the music & focus completely on this mohawked creature onstage. then at some point, the eyes would start to scan the rest of the stage, & eventually they would land on the blurry porn & try to make out what was goin on...then (hopefully) the eyes & ears would sync up and people would start to zone out & listen to the music, thus enhancing the overall experience of the live show...maybe it didn't come across like that, but it was a great experiment imo...

Personally it took about 35 minutes and finally by the fourth song, I was able to take my eyes off of the backdrop and listen to J*Davey. Their beats were fiya-- kinda like Goldie meets meets Radiohead. Jack's voihttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifce was cute, but kinda uninspiring and totally swallowed-up at times in the crazy loud distorted bass. Brook was looking too fine on synth/keys/ MAC. The fourth and fifth songs in the set were dope though. One had a hook that said something like "Miss J's gonna get her way" and something about "his wifey," but I can't remember now. Did I mention what a sexy muh-fuh Brook is? I’ve d-loaded 2 of their songs-- Mr. Mister and No More (thanks AO!)and I'm absolutely digging them. I so wish I would have liked their live performance more. But I'm your typical jaded, hard to impress New Yawker. Just in that space alone, which was previously Shine, in the last two years, I've seen Floetry, Cody ChestnuTT, Tamar Kali, and Sweetback and they, for the most part, killed it! I'm loving their two tracks and so I'm still open to seeing another J*Davey show. I will just tell myself that this first experience was, like most first sexual experiences, awkward, uneasy and just not good. But I have every confidence that the next time I experience J*Davey in the flesh, we will be in sync and I'll love every minute of it.