 |
| |
|
| |
Live Review
by SashaS
20-5-2003
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
| Macy Gray: a cuckoo's bush flyover |
|
Live: Macy Gray
Shepherds Bush Empire, London
Monday, May 19, 2003
Macy Gray over the cuckoo’s bush
It turns out to be a night of Horny Nu-Soul and Neo-Funk. Macy Gray is in da house and the subject is – “Sex!” And then, “Say ‘More sex’!” Later on, when it gets really steamy, she gets down to – dropping her designer trooz. But then, coming to the Ms Gray’s gig, you don’t expect to see – Petula Clarke. And, we obviously don’t. ‘The Trouble With Being Myself’ is entirely apt title for her current album.
Behaviour, language, attitude, funk, sex talk, soul, everything. We contemplated earlier that she were a female version of Prince, and tonight certainly proves it. The Li’l Purple One used to sex up his show and often simulate it onstage but not to the extent of Macy… Well, okay – the show wasn’t only about the practice that makes the world exist but, in the famous tradition of Mr Fawlty – “You started it!”
All the crudity aside, Macy’s got the rhythm, she’s got the lusty blues and is spiritually – complex. The band is pumping its beats with the right-on attitude of Family Stone, and the opening ‘Relating To A Psychopath’ managed to quell the restless (and booing) crowd who were protesting about her being 30 minutes late. Even erased because we were busy being encouraged to disrobe. (I wished a woman, few rows down and to the right, to take up the offer but no damn luck!)
It came after the praise to the “Most wonderful invention ever invented – the dick’! during ‘Sex-O-Matic’: ‘Sexual Revolution’ saw her drop the trousers (and she’s not very fond of underwear) to have a good go with the mic stand. It could have been lewd but it really was capricious, farcical, funny… It is also endearing because you know this is not a fakery, it is not rehearsed, it is one-off for this lot of “Sexy people” as she continually called us. Still, all the sex talk is worrying; people only gab about it when they ain’t getting it and it is hard to imagine Macy unable to bed an army. I’m sure there were, in the auditorium, at least, twen… Whah? No takers? Well, that’s the price you pay for being zany…
With Marsha Hunt-sized Afro, Macy is a sight, the ultimate and proven ‘diva’ who climaxes with the sweaty gospel-cum-Bob Marley of ‘I Try’. Earlier on she said, “We have only one problem here tonight! You all seem to know my name, but I don't know yours! So I want ‘all the sexy people’ to introduce yourselves at the top of your lungs!” NO, ta, don’t like to get that intimate with the stars.
Fresh air outside finds me totally fatigue by intense funkdom and all the sex thoughts!
SashaS
20-5-2003
Macy Gray’s album ‘Trouble With Being Myself’ is available now
|
|
|
