Funkify North Bethesda

Chuck Brown and the Funky Meters at the Music Center at Strathmore

The Post review, by Steve Kiviat

Never before at the Music Center at Strathmore has a concert sought the base of the spinal column so directly as on Friday night, when the Funky Meters and Chuck Brown took the stage in the wood-paneled concert hall. Few groups could hope to match the funk of either one of these bands separately; to have both these pioneers of funk and the Godfather of Go-Go on the same bill was more than one could have hoped. That Chuck got top billing and delivered a better set was just icing on the cake for representers of D.C.

The Funky Meters are the touring descendants of the original Meters. Drummer Joseph (Zigaboo) Modeliste and guitarist Leo Nocentelli have been replaced by David Russell Batiste, Jr., and Brian Stoltz, respectively, but keyboarder Art Neville and bassist George Porter, Jr. are still soldiering along 39 years after the band's debut recording.

The personnel replacements haven't affected the group's sound much. Hits like "Cissy Strut" and "Fire on the Bayou" dominated the set, and the canny reserve of the records opened up a bit on stage, to fine effect. We also got a heaping helping of the relationship between Neville and Porter, as they gave each other crap — when Neville fell while trying to sit down (a scary moment), we knew he was okay by the subsequent torrent of resentful expletives he unleashed in Porter's direction — and sighed when realizing how long it's been.

But all those unpredictable rhythms and the generally static texture of the music made it hard to really lose yourself in the music, live. Batiste lays down shifty syncopations with authority, but he can't match the imagination Zigaboo brought to his sticks, and the true funkiness potential of many a groove thus went unplumbed. Stoltz adeptly rips and tweaks his lines for maximum funkitude, but his solos often fell flat. Neville rarely contributed more than ornamental chords - a boil without any simmer behind it.

Perhaps the Meters were trying too hard to lay back in the groove in their opulent surroundings. Chuck Brown and his band, on the other hand, came ready for the big hall, as Chuck flashed (and that is the operative word) a bright blue suit with brighter blue lapels while his backups sported formal black suits. (Well, except drummer Juju and congo man Mighty Mo, who have mobility needs to consider. The fact that Juju was wearing a shirt is a little shocking.) As is typical, swoon-inducing keyboardist Cherie Mitchell (in a fetching black dress and what I believe are known as "strappy" heels) began noodling out a melody, here the love theme from "The Godfather," before the beat commenced. When it did, I had to get up out of my seat. At the direction of a very polite Strathmore usher, I then hauled my behind down to the side of the stage so I could get it in motion; it stayed in motion for the next hour and a half.

The great glory of the go-go beat as Chuck Brown and his band practice it arises from the interlocking of two separate moderate-tempo funk beats; the tension created by the polyrhythm resolves when the accents land on the same beat, which is the cue for your behind to reach the end of whatever periodic motion it may be essaying. Given that Chuck also incorporates extensive melodic content (not true of all go-go bands), phrases and chord progressions can also land on the beat on which the polyrhythms resolve, and when this happens the audience feels a titanic impact.

Chuck and friends also use the go-go beat to showcase their improvisational chops, and as Chuck's band includes a brass section, at least one and sometimes two keyboard players, and an occasional bass guitar in addition to Chuck's lead, the jam takes on a hybrid jazz-funk vibe. Such was the "Godfather" theme, anyway, a slow boiler with solos all around that allowed all the players to introduce themselves. The next song, "My Funny Valentine," even featured little breaks in which Chuck and company dropped the beat and cannily mimicked the original track. (The absence of the beat left my behind briefly unmoored, each time.)

The call and response Chuck did next ("Tell me how you feelin' this evening, y'all!" "Feel like movin' my body!") was remarkable for the sound of over a thousand people yelling the responses as loud as they could in an acoustically accurate, lively hall. It was kinda thrilling, to hear D.C. being represented so hard. Exemplary renditions of "Your Game," "Run Joe," and "Hoochie Coochie Man" followed; the extended horn break of the latter has never reminded me so much of the opening of Bach's Brandenburg Concerto no. 2 as it did in the Music Center, a place in which the concerto has actually been played.

This reminds us that another thing go-go does exceptionally well is its covers, which, guided by the dictates of the beat, always seem to delve straight to the original song's chordal essence and cast any unremarkable lyrics by the wayside. So it was when Cherie came out from behind the keyboards and was joined by go-go stalwart Little Benny for the "Chuck Brown is 70 years old and needs to take a break" portion of the show.

After her obligatory, fairly devastating rapped self-introduction, Cherie essayed a couple R&B covers, the second being the outstanding one: a take on "Check On It," the Beyonce/Slim Thug song that was the best thing about Steve Martin's remake of "The Pink Panther." Here Cherie sang as well as Beyonce, Benny ably substituted nonsense vocalise and call-and-response phrases for Slim Thug's rhyming, and the band replaced the easy synth-and-voice slide through the V-VI-VII-I chord progression that ends the chorus in the original Swizz Beatz production with a progression punched out in brass and keyboard hits in completely straightahead eighth notes, as Cherie continued to swing above. It made the chorus feel more momentous while revealing something about the original by making it strange: a winner all around. Little Benny's "Cat in the Hat," a cautionary tale about the perils of drug use, uses the opposite chord progression (from I to V) with smears of brass riding all the way down; it was a canny juxtaposition to play the two songs back to back.

Chuck then returned to launch into the Super Hits portion of the program, doing his infectious medley of "It Don't Mean A Thing (If It Ain't Got That Go-Go Swing)," "Moody's Mood for Love," and "Woody Woodpecker" (really). The band broke off sharply on the final chord of "Woody," and Chuck made as though to leave the stage, bringing the crowd to its feet. So when Chuck inevitably came back for his first and biggest hit, "Bustin' Loose," over a thousand people were on their feet, shaking and grooving and doing any damn thing they wanted to. Whether you're a habitué of the Legend Nightclub or the Kennedy Center, there are few things more beautiful than that, and Strathmore was an unlikely but perfect place to see it. Even Chuck's obligatory recitation of his D.C. Lottery commercial after the lights went up couldn't spoil that moment.

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