Listen & Be Heard Weekly Archives

According to www.allmusic.com, there are currently seventy-two recordings of the Gene McDaniels composition “Compared to What” listed at its website. The song, primarily associated with Les McCann and his many versions of it (his live one with Eddie Harris that opens the 1969 Atlantic Records album “Swiss Movement” is a personal favorite), has been featured recently on 2005’s “The Putrid Minds Anthology: Battle Hymns for the Blue States” by The Sons of Emperor Norton (the CD was reviewed in last week’s issue of Listen & Be Heard, Volume 5, Issue 10; the song was not mentioned) and in “The Nefertiti Xperience,” the new release by Gemini Soul on the Pearl Jazz label.

Coincidence? Synchronicity? I tend to opt for the latter. Something seems to be heating up in the collective subconscious lately. I cannot explain what or why.

I can tell you that last Thursday I turned on NBC’s “The Office” and watched Steve Carell’s character Michael Scott yell “I! DECLARE! BANKRUPTCY!” a week after watching the same network’s program “Medium” and seeing the word “BANKRUPT!” used as its first word of dialog as part of the episode’s silent-movie-as-dream-sequence introduction. Perhaps you the reader have read or heard about Vallejo’s current financial quagmire and the possibility of bankruptcy being used to get the city back to a status where a slogan like “Stand for Change” is not synonymous with “Begging.” Compared to what is going on, what exactly IS going on?

I can also tell you – this IS a CD review, after all – that Gemini Soul has put together a winner with this new recording. Rooted in the funk and fusion of the 1970s, “The Nefertiti Xperience” contains thirteen compositions, all but two by bassist and bandleader Andre Ajamu Akinyele.

Akinyele is joined by Andrew Foster on percussion, Alex Marks on drums, and Jon O’Bergh on keyboards. And when I say “joined,” I mean that this band is playing, thinking, and listening as one unit. The quieter passages, like O’Bergh’s piano solo in “Nefertiti’s Theme,” are every bit as intense and solid as the backbeat of “Sun Goddess,” with its basslines alternating between popping and some notes that sound like they were dripping out of the amplifier, like ice cream melting in the sun.

There is a definite sonic connection with Herbie Hancock’s “Headhunters” period, not in terms of synthesizer sounds and techniques but in the band’s above-mentioned approach to its music. Listen again to “Headhunters” and you will hear one TIGHT band. Akinyele, Foster, Marks, and O’Bergh seem to have learned one thing about the first wave of fusion groups, particularly Return to Forever, Weather Report, and The Mahavishnu Orchestra: sustained focus on chops gets old fast. Gemini Soul relies on its compositions for “The Nefertiti Xperience,” ones refreshingly noodle-free with a lot of room for musical exploration during a live setting. I would expect extended soloing from all four members at gigs. And LOTS of funk.

To order “The Nefertiti Xperience” and for additional information, visit www.geminisoul.net.

Gemini Soul will be performing at Vallejo‚Äôs Town House Cocktail Lounge at 401A Georgia Street on Saturday, March 15, 2008. Showtime is 9:30 p.m. Admission is $5.00. I’m sure they’ll try to make it real, compared to what…