De Andre "El Prez" Harvey comes by his moniker honest. See for yourself in the latest installment in my series profiling L.A.'s underground artists on LA Stereo.TV, "You Oughta Know."
Photo courtesy Kasey Stokes.
Liz Rebert and Paul Kampf in '11,September.' Photo by Heather Kampf.
While that may be true of Healy, Kampf needs to plead guilty to exactly the opposite. "11, September" is a grab bag of "heinous crimes." Reach your hand in, and you might get incest! Abuse! Infidelity! Invasion of privacy! Murder! Breaking and entering! Homicide! Suicide! Step right up, "11, September" wants you all to walk away with a "prize."
Kampf explains this all-inclusive mentality by defining theatre as a "heightened sense of reality where the audience must be presented with the extreme in order to examine their own lives." Yet an audience can only absorb so much shock before it becomes desensitized. That's precisely the effect in "11, September." Following one of the many twists in Act II, murmurs questioning what exactly was being referenced onstage could be heard in the rows surrounding me.
Strangely enough, Kampf seems awkward in the role he presumably wrote for himself. Liz Rebert as Angela Madison fares a little better, but the lack of chemistry between the two actors casts a shadow of doubt over their chance meeting, the event on which the entire play hinges. Worse yet (though perhaps intentionally), this void significantly ups the "ick" factor of their affair.
Chris Cash's original score, at turns eerie and nostalgic, is responsible for creating ambience that more appropriately matches the script. Every twinkling and delicate entrance of music feels as if someone is lifting the top of an old-fashioned music box, complete with twirling plastic ballerina.
Leaving its home of 15 years, Chicago, Breadline Productions makes its first foray into the Los Angeles theatre scene with this premiere. The packing and moving process includes ditching all things extraneous. After they settle in, maybe they'll apply that same principle to "11, September."
Breadline Productions presents "11, September"
Through February 7
Thursday/Friday/Saturday, 8PM; Sunday, 7PM
Odyssey Theatre
2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd.
Those samples had to come from somewhere. Question is, who does it better?
A Hollywood hiatus was welcomed, but "Throwbacks" happily left nine-degree weather behind for "just another day out in sunny L.A."
As 2010 dawns, all eyez are tuning into the West Coast's hip-hop scene, and Pac Div's the early favorite. Last summer, they dropped a mixtape, "Church League Champions," that's so good it should've been considered a contender in the year-end "Best Of" lists. Producer Swiff D deserves special recognition for lifting a sample I'd bet money many didn't catch.
The Classic: Prince's "Housequake"
New School Interpretation: Pac Div's "Shut Up"
At some point during the first three episodes of HBO's goose bump-inducing miniseries "Band of Brothers," you'll likely be compelled to release any intellectual grasp on the present and allow a torrent of emotion to spirit you into the past. For many Americans who, due to a near daily dose of screaming dissent being shoved down their throats, have developed an impassive distaste for the war, the choking, metallic lump of feeling "Brothers" arouses is almost embarrassing in its swift disarmament.
Continue reading The End of Innocence: "Band of Brothers" a Startlingly Affecting Tribute.
Kyle "VerBS" Guy is the embodiment of L.A.'s blue skies-n-lemon sunshine vibe. He also raps "really, really good." Check out the first installment in my new series profiling L.A.'s underground artists on LA Stereo.TV, "You Oughta Know." Photo courtesy Kasey Stokes.
Those samples had to come from somewhere. Question is, who does it better?
There's never been any question of Scarface repping a down-n-dirty South. That's been apparent since the Geto Boys' (Bushwick Bill, Scarface, and Willie D) album cover for We Can't Be Stopped featured 'Face and Willie D pushing Bushwick Bill on a hospital gurney right after he tried to commit suicide and instead shot out his eye. Yes. That really happened.
Every region has its anthems- Cam'ron's "I Used to Get it in Ohio," Jay Z and Santogold's "Brooklyn (We Go Hard)," Lord Tariq and Peter Gunz's "Déjà vu (Uptown Baby)," Ludacris and Field Mob's "Georgia," Petey Pablo's "Raise Up," Tupac's "California Love." The one that best waves the flag for Texas, and maybe the entire South, is Scarface's "My Block." This song and video always make me a little homesick for, and a lot happy to be from, the South- kinda like hearing a rich, buttery Southern accent if I haven't been home for a while.
He already has you when he rhymes, "What's goin' on in this house is stayin' here," but when he tacks the "comprende?" on the end, it's Tex-Mex genius.
The Classic: Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway's "Be Real Black For Me"
New School Interpretation: Scarface's "My Block"
Those samples had to come from somewhere. Question is, who does it better?
Often rappers salvage a soul song's wrapping paper, the beat, and discard the present of the message. Not R&B singer Raheem DeVaughn, whose honeyed voice sounds directly descended from Curtis Mayfield's. Grabbing Mayfield's bleak description of life lived on "The Other Side of Town," DeVaughn pulls the frustration forward into 2009 with commentary not just on the ghetto, but also on the U.S.'s collective mentality of invincibility at home and abroad (bonus for a pointed reference to the error of conferring savior status on a politician).
DeVaughn, a Washington, D.C. native, pairs up with one of the best, ATL's Ludacris, for "Bulletproof," evidence that for all the "party and bullshit," mainstream hip-hop and soul still have a conscience.
The Classic: Curtis Mayfield's "The Other Side of Town"
New School Interpretation: Raheem DeVaughn's (Ft. Ludacris) "Bulletproof"
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