Rock Around the World
Terence Trent Darby Live at the American
Legion
By Emery Columna
La Crescenta, CA
At: http://www.ratw.com/promo/darby.htm
Terence Trent Darby is a complete Industry package.
TTD's stage presence is a sight to behold. The dude has stage
moves at a level further up the ladder from David Lee Roth
and Steven Tyler. TTD's moves and choreography indicate a
man that's been schooled. And that ain't necessarily in a
classroom, or Arthur Murray, you dig?. As for the band, well,
give the band some. TTD basically has a bomb squad of a band
and the cats dropped the Bomb on 16 August. The set included
songs from all 4 albums TTD has released. The show lasted
more than 2 hours and in that moment you realize that TTD
is very, very, very wide musically.
In his benediction at the end of the show, TTD
started to say that Artists/Musicians have the special privilege
of interpreting the Voice of God, but then he recognized he
was at the American Legion and not at his father's church,
so he blipped the throttle and downshifted to the voices of
the gods. Dig. If you've never been to church and come up
in that environment, you can't really comprehend a portal
of time quite influencial upon a young Darby. There are people
in churches all across America that can flat-out sing the
boots off your socks. TTD is well aware of this and has probably
witnessed the criticism of a congregation with high expectations
of the Sunday soloist.
And we move on. One of the highlights of the
night was TTD's segue to James Brown's Super Bad, which put
everybody's head on a swivel. An other meaningful moment was
TTD's tip that Read My Lips was one of the tunes on his demo
tape that freaked out the record company. The reprise of it
this night was just as freaky. I think it was James Baldwin
who remarked that one of the characteristics of Royalty on
the African Continent was the way the elite's EYES gave them
away. Dig.
TTD's eyes have the ocular power to express
things without words well past 35 yards. You have got to see
this for yourself. The dude is some kind of exiled [prince].
I was standing by the soundboard and the cat was saying things
with his eyes alone, punctuating the words of each song with
a glance. A Bad MF this TTD is.
Performance Rating:* * * *
