Caught a rare stripped-down version of the Ones & Nines, Jersey City’s best soul band. Their debut CD, reviewed here is pretty awesome and live they mix up their originals with obscure and (depending on how you define semi) semi-obscure Rock & Roll, R&B and Soul classics—of course, if they’re obscure, are they really classic? Discuss. The sound these cats engender though it isn’t just a revival of that classic Stax and related rhythms, they move the story forward. Usually, there’s a horn section but after the set, Guitarist and song writer Jeff Marino told me that the gig was booked on short notice and the horn player (s) couldn’t make it.
Perhaps due to the lack of the wind instruments, the set had a harder edge. Vera Sousa was in fine voice and seemed especially energetic. I seem to recall an outstanding “Something on Your Mind,” one of their originals. The thing is that this group adheres so seamlessly to these classic sounds that you can’t tell the covers from the originals, especially since the covers tend towards rarely heard gems. The set with spirited, upbeat rockers about love with a poignant “You're Taking Up Another Man's Place,” a Mabel Johns Stax single that had me dusting off the box set and playing it when I got home. Mabel Johns has a fascinating career, most recently she appeared in Honey Dripper, a great John Sayles film. She was one of the few Soul Divas on both Stax and Motown, and her Stax singles are powerful. Where as Johns sings this as a lament, Vera infuses it with a Gen Y feminist energy, bringing a contemporary sensibility to this timeless War of the Sexes ditty. There’s no pleading here, just a clear and refreshingly deliberate warning to the guy to stop doing her wrong.
You think those Groove on Grove gigs are tough, this Exchange Place format was a real challenge, echo all over the place—Vera told me the musicians couldn’t hear each other. No stage, not even a raised platform. They were playing on the sidewalk. Coupled with the fact that everybody was here for the bike-deal, a ten mile tour of Jersey City on bicycles, ending down here on Exchange Place. Nobody was here to hear music. Well, except yours truly. They played a good set, and I noticed that while the first part of the set, crowds just flowed through sort of indifferent to the songs, by the set’s conclusion, which included the aforementioned Mabel Johns Rendition, the number of lingering and interested listeners grew.
The bass player, Alex Tyshkov seemed to be having an exceptional afternoon, or maybe his instrument merely survived the less than optimal sound mixing at the event. I talked to him after the set. He was playing some pretty mean riffs. I wondered if the bass had to step up to the plate so to speak because of the lack of the horn section. “The temptation is to compensate with a lot of noodling and filling in the spaces. But what you want to do is get out of the way and let the groove speak for itself.”
Visit: face or space
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