Word: funke
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Country music, in case you city folk haven't noticed, is where pop music went to live. When rock 'n' roll settled into the bustling ghettos of white metal and black funk, country claimed the ears of the pop-music homeless -- those who like songs to mix catchy melodies with prickly home truths. By reaching people raised on '60s folk music and Beatles rock, country has become suburbanized. It's as much at home in malls and vans as it used to be in grange halls and pickups...
Rappers expressing their passion for justice and black empowerment are hardly uncommon. Rhyming over experimental jazz, funk, blues and reggae samples is no longer unorthodox. But the Atlanta-based group Arrested Development does both in a way that strikes a novel note. For one thing, consider its makeup. There are four men and two women (itself unusual, since rap groups nearly always divide strictly along gender lines): a lead rapper- singer named Speech, a deejay, another singer, a traditional African dancer and -- get this -- a 60-year-old spiritual adviser, who doesn't appear onstage with the group but draws...
Lead vocalist Mike Patton growls, screeches and roars his way through songs making not-so-subtle commentary on greed, complacency and selfishness. It's easy to laugh at the skewering of a thirtysomething character in the midtempo funk-rocker Midlife Crisis who derives her sense of security from her "pockets jingling" and is wrapped in "morbid self-attention...
Then the Crimson recovered from its funk. It ripped off four straight goals and, once again, this team seemed bound to drink champagne Sunday afternoon...
...Check Your Head they lay down equal parts of spunk, punk and funk to retake some of their old turf while displaying a newfound respect for their musical elders. For the listener, the result is like looking at 30 years of pop music through the bottom of an empty beer bottle. Live at P.J.'s at times evokes a schmaltzy hotel lounge act. Elsewhere, Santana-like Latin percussion and '60s soul grooves join a pastiche of electronically altered vocals and jabbering wah-wah guitars. Songs like Finger Lickin' Good mix live instruments with electronically sampled sounds and fluid tempos -- "switching...