Walking into General Admission/Dance floor at Webster Hall, one feels a slow pull back in time. The bruised beige and crimson colors oscillate along the mezzanine and triangular designs on the walls above, giving the whole room a pre World War I chic. It’s rad, and a full two hours before Thievery Corporation goes on, the crowd is ready to rock. The gear is all set up, Aguilar amps, their like logo as the head of the kick drum. A sitar is perched on an antique sofa, and a turntable is set high center stage and two far back on its flanks. They will have dominion over Webster Hall tonight.
Before TC, however, is opener The Bins. A Cali native living in Brooklyn, the DJ rocks a ski jacket that’s radioactive pink, purple, and yellow. It’s the kind of threads that work best when flooded in hip, modern stage lights. The Bins spins the kind of Hip-hop smart people listen to. In order to DJ, one has to know a lot of tracks and catalogue them accordingly. He does his homework on what’s hot, shuffling from 1970s Bronx to Bombay and back. The hip-hop got hipper and the lights got warmer. Blues turned to reds and indigos to yellows as he slyly scratches a sample and says, “Are you ready for Thievery Corporation?” The crowd roars.
The set begins with a man walking to the tables, pressing a button, and playing some dub. The whole floor shifts to yellow, green, and lavender lights. The band hits it on the one. The guitar by Rob Myers is intergalactic; delay and reverb pedals loom like a whale song of a higher frequency, bouncing around the hall. The bass player, Ashish Vyas, shuffles about center stage and stage left like a leopard with cage madness. His black, humid hair falls upon his shoulders as he glides back and forth. He would seemingly make a fine member of the Proud House of Slytherin.
In comes Natalia Clavier, one of the collective’s female vocalists. As she sings, reverb rolls off the microphone while baby blue light behind her darks her atomic red hair as her voice does laps around our brains. After the song she disappears, passing the mic to Loulou Ghelichkhani, in an embroidered gown, bindi shining the color black behind white. She sings like she is Perry Farrell’s younger sister. Her delayed vocals wash the mid range of the ensemble and Ganja smoke floats to my nose as she leads the bridge overtaking the minor key jam.
The guitarist grabs his sitar on the mint green old school psychotherapy sofa and breaks into “Lebanese Blonde”. Loulou muses, “Too low to find my way, too high to wonder why”. How could you not love this? The bassist floats around the stage with his violin shaped 4 string bass. Rob Garza applauds every time the band ceases a song, for he is as much of a listener as he is a performing musician right now.
Then they play my Jam, “Liberation Front”. Two dreadlocked hype men emerge, one rocking a pith helmet, the symbol of African Colonialism. They are toasting, and getting the crowd rowdy, jumping and waving their hands through the air. They invoke the godfather of Soul by shouting, “Get up! Git on up!” The back of the hall empties as the crowd pushes forward, everyone trying to get as close to the sound as possible.
You know what’s to love about this show? There is an absurd lack of iPhone sticking out of the group, taking videos and photos. No one is texting. The people are here, and they’re listening. The songs go on with English, Spanish, and French verses. To play in this band would be the best gig ever. The set never gets boring as they sway up and down in dynamics.
How would I describe a Thievery Corporation show? High-class third world grooves from every corner of the tropics. They take us from slow, sweaty Rumbas, to Roots dub armed with the rally call, “Fuck the IMF!” and warn of being on the lookout for vampires, the Baldheads that suck the children of Jah dry.
From there we space out to the windswept jams of the Silk Road, not quite Indian, not quite Persian, not quite Arab, not quite Turk. The borders of this music are not arbitrarily drawn on a map like many proud nations were in the 20th century. They close with “Richest Man in Babylon,” and the crowd sings the woes like a choir. It is another warning to all who hear this song. Money can’t buy life, all will lose the rat race, and there is no wisdom in such freedom.
Walking out of the venue into Manhattan, perhaps the very center of Babylon, I felt much more prepared for the world’s demons, rejuvenated by the power of true music.
[Photos by Aaron Glick]