There Is No Magic In The Musiq

A week before  the Musiq concert at Rams Head,  I got an email from my manager asking me if I wanted to work the event. Of course, I said "yes" because that's money in my pocket. I had my reserves about the show but they were justified from our past run-ins. Lets me just start off by saying he was a Hoarsemess.com *in my Tamar voice*. The crowd and background vocalists did the singing for him. Of course he did not apologize for his lack of vocals. The 5'5 singer "sang" like his voice was in tip top shape. NOT! Where would any artist be without their band... who tore the roof off the mutha.

The sounds were inaudible...nothing but mumbles. Countless times I've asked myself WTF is he saying? Now I like to think that I am a very forgiving fan but the last 2 or 3 shows, Musiq's voice has been less than acceptable. So I am I supposed to believe that every time he comes to Baltimore his voice gives out?? I'm going to go with HELL NO!

He's on his 6th album and this is unacceptable. I believe Musiq in the Magic is some of his best work but I'm over him live in the flesh. He killed himself when he opened for Anthony Hamilton. He had a broken leg, crushes and was suited and booted. Hamilton outdid himself that night. One of his best shows and he wasn't in complete health either. That's what you call a performer.

How many off nights can a performer have in a row? Poor thang kept tugging on his clothes as if they were too tight. SMH...I vowed that I would NEVER see him live again unless he opened for someone. But I had to work the event so it was totally free 99, but my freeness was insulted. Now you know that's a shame in a half. If Musiq and or his camp are reading please do better so that the rest of his fans won't feel hoodwinked. Thank you for your time!

Setlist

Be my girlfriend

In my life -rocking withchu

Half crazy

If u leave...then baby I'll leave

Guitar solo

Teach me how to love

Single

I Do

Love Contract

I've got sunshine

One of my favs: Idontwannabefriends

Ijuswannaloveyou

Ribbon in the sky

Yes mixed with anita baker I feel no shame

Love

Beautiful

MJ let the magic n the music into u...life aint so bad at all-highlight of his voice

Buddy

Anything

If I wouldn't knew

Coors Lights presents NERD at Sonar

L.A. based rap group Pac Div opened up for NERD. Now I downloaded Pac Div's mixtape Mania! when it first came out and only listened to it once or twice. Silly me those guys are awesome. They had slick lyrics and stage presence to be new on the scene. Brothers Mibbs and Like and their longtime friend BeYoung got the crowd nice and ready for their mentors. Their set was better to me than NERD. I'm sure some of you are shock by the last comment but it's true.

The energy was through the roof. Granted I’d seen Pharell, Chad Hugo and Shay open for Erykah Badu two summers ago. This time around they were at a much smaller venue and the headliners of the night. I enjoyed their performance way better at Pier 6 . Maybe it was the ambience of the venue. Let me set the scene for you…grown and sexy (that phrase should be buried btw but follow me anyway) on the harbor, breeze flowing, different age groups, big flashing lights and background dancers. The crowd at Sonar was your Jordan wearing, tight jean rocking, going broke to buy a BBE t-shirt, Cassie look a like wearing fans. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing wrong with that but I’m an old soul so I guess the older crowd and background dancers, and flashing lights did something for me two years ago.

 At one point, Pharell encouraged the crowd to “bump into your neighbor”…As he’s talking I’m thinking “Baltimore doesn’t need an excuse to be violent…lawd no” then before you know it everybody is knocking into each other, jumping up and down…it was a seen out of movie. I had to remove myself from the middle of the “chaos” and didn't know if i should prepare myself for an expected mosh  pit. Highlight-I love the bassline in “all girls standing in the life the bathroom” …that’s when I started acting like a monkey fool right along with the NERD fanatics. That song just sends me OVER the top. They performed a lot of songs from In Search of Sound album..which is not particularly my favorite album from the guys…so I just bopped my head since I didn’t know the lyrics. 

Quadron Opens for Raphael Saadiq

While Danish based music group Quadron was in town a couple weeks ago opening for Raphael Saadiq, I had the opportunity to chat with lead singer Coco. I'm learning that musicians are very shy and reserved aside from their on stage persona. She was very soft spoken, shy and a sweetie pie. Not jaded by her group's popularity one little bit.

Coco wasn't joined by her other half Robin but instead she had a musician by the name of August to fill the void. Now I've never seen Quadron perform live before, but I thoroughly enjoyed their set as a newbie. I can't begin to imagine how it feels to perform to a lackluster crowd. I swear I was the one dancing like my life depended on it. Sadly enough, the crowd had no idea who they were except for me and like 10 others so they were just staring at them on stage.

I get so frustrated with Baltimore because they are such a hard crowd to please. I've even heard very well known artists say that Baltimore crowds are tougher than New York City- that blew me away. Luckily-they sold all of their cds after their set before Saadiq came onstage. That brought a smile to my face. Always makes me happy when independent artists win over a crowd and gains new fans. I suddenly feel like a proud parent.

Coco's voice had me speechless. She was so animated on stage while grooving to the sound of her own voice. Don't you just love when singing is so effortless for some people?  Keyboardist August played all sorts of sounds on the keyboard. Amazing what you can do on the keys. August played the heck out of the saxophone on the keys. It was un-be-liev-able!

Chanel Laren: How is it being signed to indie label Plug Research?

Coco: It's pretty dope. We were pretty happy about that. It came out of the computer one day on Myspace they were interested in us. We didn’t have any expectations for the U.S. at all- we were just happy that it got released in Denmark.
CL: Do you think you’ll do any collaborations with your label mates?

Coco: We are both big fans of Bilal and Flying Lotus. We would love to and now it’s out there. We’ve met Bilal a couple times. We are doing the Jazz Reggae fest he's going to be a part of the ensemble I’ll be performing. That will be one step closer to a collaboration.

CL: How’d you come up with the name Quadron?

Coco: We wanted the name to be something we had in common and have a nice one word. Robin and I are both a quarter black. Robin’s grandfather is West African American and my grandfather is African. That is one thing we have in common. Quadron comes from the word quadroon. Quadron is the same in Danish except its spelled kuadron...it makes sense in English and Danish. It could be a quarter of soul, electronic music- a lot of things. It’s good word to build on.

CL: Have you fully digested your success?

Coco: The internet is crazy…its hard to feel what’s really going. You read a lot of stuff and you don’t know who these people are or what it means. For instance, we discovered that a radio station in Seattle was playing Average Fruit. We found that on the internet. Sometime you google your own name. We were excited that an American radio station was playing our song. We didn’t know what it meant because we didn’t know what that meant and now we’ve figured it out. Between internet and touring that’s how we feel like things are happening. It’s nice to connect to the fans. It’s nice to put faces with the people you write with like right now.

CL: How’d you and Robin meet?
Coco: Copahagen is really small, you almost know everybody when you do music. He was in a group Boom Clap Bachelors and had a dj friend who was a common friend for us. He had worked at a record shop and my friend told me about him. Eventually he took me to the record shop digging for some instrumentals that I would sing on top of at local night clubs. And he introduced me to Robin and invited him to one of our shows and he didn’t show up. But a week later we did another event and he was there with Boom Clap. I sang and they liked it and asked me to be apart of the live band. I was asked to stay and one day Quadron was born.