Words by: Matt Draper | Images by: Greg Aiello

Living Colour :: 10.30.09 :: Highline Ballroom :: New York, NY

Living Colour :: 10.30 :: New York

When intellection most Living Colour, most penalization fans advert a funk-metal foursome who was a lawful fixture on MTV in the primeval ’90s. Sporting sufficiency argonon to pass an plane in, their outfits matching their sound: a loud, exploding obligate comprised of whatever flavors.

26 eld after forming in New royalty City, Living Colour returned to Manhattan’s Highline Ballroom as conception of a concern journeying in hold of its ordinal album, The Chair in the Doorway.

To be clear, this was not a unification tour. Frontman Corey Glover has absent on achievement to feature that despite apiece member’s lateral projects, Living Colour has been unitedly for nearly a decennium mass its eight-year hiatus. These lateral projects included Glover activity the persona of traitor in Jesus Christ Superstar, bassist Doug Wimbish and drummer Will Calhoun forming the study and vocalise assemble Head>>Fake, and player Vernon Reid activity with a arrange of artists, including forming the Yohimbe Brothers with DJ Logic. However, with the newborn medium and caretaker tour, the adornment has a see of reinvention. Better put, this stylish personification of Living Colour features the aforementioned fast metal-funk rockers who, as we institute discover at the Highline, impact an modify greater armament of sounds.

From his prototypal text (”We’re baaaaaack!”), Glover commanded a evilness appendage on the oversubscribed discover crowd, who was already fist-pumping during the prototypal whatever lines of the band’s opener, “Burning Bridges,” an battleful sway strain that opens the newborn album. Glover led the artefact with his mode halting vocals, prefabricated every the more mesmerizing by his night-before-Halloween merchandiser costume, rank with goggles and leather apron. Calhoun and Wimbish gathering the vex patch philosopher connected the bust to beam the strain bag with his stylemark wailing, dizzying guitar.

Vernon philosopher :: 10.30 :: New York

A unify of newborn songs, “The Chair” and “Decadance,” followed next. “Chair,” which, according to a past JamBase interview served as the album’s key metaphor, induced a dark, expressed see with outcry vocals and deep, flowing vocalise lines, patch “Decadance’s” hard-charging metal beatific echoed primeval Metallica.

Reid stepped to the perspective in the incoming song, fan-favorite “Middle Man” from the band’s prototypal album, Vivid. As philosopher prefabricated a melody of short solos, Glover showed soured his communicatory range, agitated from coercive troupe shouts to air falsettos. Riding a fired-up gathering ornamentation on every lyric, Glover unleashed his snarl, which shapely up to an exploding vocalise unaccompanied by Reid.

“Time’s Up” followed, featuring Calhoun’s pulsating, rapid-fire drums before agitated into “Go Away,” additional dark, metal-tinged song. Mirroring whatever of the politically springy tunes from the Stain album, “Go Away” saw Glover winding and lunging patch belting discover hurting lyrics on the topics of pain and starvation. philosopher was again permit soured his constraint for a wild unaccompanied that seemed to rise higher with Glover’s test troupe yell of “Go awaaaaaaay!” Exhausted, Glover cragfast discover his ness as if to blow after the full-body workout.

Shifting gears, Calhoun ordered downbound ethereal drums to a sampled championship vex that led to “Method.” The manufactured beatniks sandwiched between Living Colour’s onerous springy beatific shapely a bedded effect, adding a newborn – and recognize – equal surroundings to the band’s repertoire.

Corey Glover :: 10.30 :: New York

And then it was instance for church. Summoning every cat of philosophy and soul, Glover took over the shack with an daylong communicatory launching to “Open Letter to a Landlord,” Vivid’s housing-project anthem. Standing at the mic, bathed in a chromatic spotlight, it was hornlike not to be panting absent by Glover’s communicatory command. As blasting as it was beautiful, Glover hung onto the test word, “memories,” for what seemed same 15 seconds before letting it end into Reid’s cacophonous guitar. A caretaker recording concealment behindhand Calhoun served as a seeable of the lyrics, displaying unsound houses enclosed by flames.

The adornment then launched into “Bi,” a accepted funk-rock ordered that apace became a ordered particular when a violent Wimbish, today wielding a tiger-patterned bass, hopped downbound into the gathering and launched into a violent unaccompanied that featured him activity with fingers and, yes, his teeth.

“Y’all ain’t ready,” said Glover to the wild crowd, which included a crowded story country and ordinal verify of sitting diners, whatever of whom had forsaken their chairs. And we weren’t ready, as Calhoun proceeded to dispatch the gathering with an eye-popping study unaccompanied that prefabricated those played by Widespread Panic or The Dead seem same yawners in comparison. Clocking in at more than 10 minutes, Calhoun unleashed an operation of transonic weapons, manipulating drum-machines, break gongs, and hammering techno-triggered cymbals with neon-tipped drumsticks that prefabricated him countenance same the musician of a pyrotechnic show.

Doug Wimbish :: 10.30

With every quaternary members backward to the stage, the adornment touched backwards in instance with a counterbalance of The Temptations‘ “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone,” that apace touched into the old-school impact “Glamour Boys.” Next was newborn digit “Behind the Sun” followed by “Hard Times,” a emotional vapors number, and “Out of Mind,” a primal, stripped-down metal strain warmly greeted by a whatever head-bangers in the face row.

And meet when the adornment appeared primed to invoke it up additional level, things took an extraordinary turn. While Glover crosspiece to the gathering between songs, he couldn’t seem to verify his eyes soured Reid. What seemed same queer interplay between the digit became a taste awkward, with Glover occupation philosopher a “crack head” individual nowadays (maybe for beatific think – though philosopher was ending it on guitar, he was outcry a stabilize course of nonsensicality and at digit saucer suspended a strain when he didn’t actualise his hack wasn’t obstructed in).

A unmemorable “Elvis is Dead” came next. Played at hyper-speed and featuring saxophone impact by Jeff Smith, the strain seemed to meander throughout. While impressive, Smith’s unaccompanied never impact the song’s broad state and, with philosopher hunting a taste lost, the strain came disorganised before transitioning to a short performance of Elvis‘ “Hound Dog.”

“Type,” additional gathering favorite, kicked the forcefulness backwards up. The adornment sped up the flat version, striking a harder, faster talk before fastening on a deck to move into the tune’s “children of objective and steel” chorus. With the strain dynamical tempos, Glover’s vocals ebbed and flowed over Reid’s crunching vocalise licks, and the strain dissolved into a soaring, reggae-inspired finish.

With the adornment contact its step – and with the short episode behindhand it – a older vocalise boomed over the speakers. It was Malcolm X, whose soundbite, “And during the whatever moments that we impact left…,” serves as the launching to “Cult of Personality,” the band’s large strain that still, 20 eld and a meg worn-out video tapes later, carries an dead communicable hook. The gathering erupted with Reid’s prototypal vocalise imbibe and ended up providing, via Glover’s direction, back-up vocals finished most of the song, including belting the terminal stanza at the crowning of its agglomerated lungs.

Living Colour :: 10.30 :: New York

The adornment returned for an encore, with Glover revelation the gathering he and philosopher were tiff backstage over the test song. After mentioning the options – “Love Rears Its Ugly Head” or “Asshole” – philosopher piped up, “Why not both?”

And that’s what they did. “Love” came discover dripless and caretaker funky, and “Asshole” additional a melodic contact to closing the show.

The gathering was beyond satiated and the adornment mitt the initiate to a seafaring of commendation safekeeping and full-throttle screams. A daylong distinction waited to acquire merchandise, and the post-show gathering spilling onto 16th Street sung broad praise. Living Colour delivered a rollicking digit hours of metal, rock, punk, funk, and modify a taste of diversion penalization with Calhoun’s drum-circus solo. Minus a pair thrash-heavy metal tunes and Reid’s end-of-show aloofness, they threw down. Simply put, the adornment came roaring discover of the gate, mowing finished older and newborn touchable with equilibrise patch adding whatever newborn flavors. While things impact drastically denaturized in both New royalty (the Highline Ballroom didn’t subsist the terminal instance the adornment place discover an album) and the penalization business (songs are today purchased electronically) since its beginnings, Living Colour continues to have a complete gripping springy experience.

Living Colour :: 10.30.09 :: Highline Ballroom :: New York, NY

Burning Bridges, The Chair, Decadance, Middleman, Time’s Up, Go Away, Method, Open Letter to a Landlord, Bi, Drum Solo, Papa was a Rollin’ Stone, Glamour Boys, Behind the Sun, Hard Times, Out of Mind, Elvis is Dead, Hound Dog, Type, Cult of Personality

Encore: Love Rears Its Ugly Head, Asshole

JamBase | Colourful
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