Toronto – The theme for my last weekend of the jazz festival was intimate clubs. I chose to spend Saturday evening at Trane Studio to check out Andy Milne & Dapp Theory. I had read their bio and was interested in what was described as a jazz hip-hop fusion. Indeed after the ridiculously amazing show The Roots put on, I was looking for just such an excuse to listen to more hip-hop. With this in mind, I was curious to see what Dapp Theory was all about. They’ve recently garnered some praise in Jazz Times with some lofty words about pioneering a “musical unified field theory”.
Do not have a wedding reception at a club where there is a live show about to happen, unless you are related to one of the musicians.
When I arrived at Trane Studio, I was a little surprised to find a woman in a bridal gown. At first I was under the impression that maybe Andy Milne’s cousin just got married and decided to have the reception at the show. That would have been wicked cool. I was disappointed to find out that the wedding reception and the show were completely unrelated. With the reception butting right up against the live show, it certainly made for an awkward standoff as concert goers waited for the wedding party to vacate the club. Let this be a lesson to our attentive readers: do not have a wedding reception at a club where there is a live show about to happen, unless you are related to one of the musicians.
I was definitely expecting hip-hop to be a prominent aspect of this show. In reality, the needle was pegged at “jazz” on my trusty jazz-to-hip-hop fusion-o-meter. This normally wouldn’t be much of a problem for me, because I like jazz. I just couldn’t identify with the jazz that Dapp Theory was playing. The hip-hop aspects were really more spoken word. On my other trusty instrument, my beatnik-to-hip hop fusion-o-meter, the needle was pretty forcefully pegged at beatnik. Not in a good way. The songs were long and the crowd seemed both stoic and alienated.
I’ll admit that it was entertaining to see some elderly ladies sitting completely still trying to absorb the crazy beatnik jazz going on. Five minutes of repetitive vocal vamp had them really reeling. They looked wide-eyed and perhaps a little scared. Unfortunately the novelty of crowd watching faded pretty quickly, and so I decided to copy Brian’s move from the night before at the very same club and abscond while the absconding was good.
