Last year’s CD, Big Freedia Hitz Vol. 1 (www.bigfreedia.com), is probably the best (and safest … just why I will get to momentarily) way to get a slice of what Freedia and this music is all about though you have to take it as only part of the experience. The beats and percussion are hard, harsh and nearly cacophonous bordering on the monotonous, with call-and-response choruses and witty samples tossed in the mix (Bill Haley and The Comets’ “Rock Around the Clock” and The Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back,” to name a couple). “Gin In My System” (where Freedia taunts, “I got some gin in my system/somebody’s gonna be my victim…”) and “Rock Around Da’ Clock” are straight-up party stoppers—recordings so intense, brutal and over the top that they would likely be the closers for any house party, or beacons to signal the arrival of the cops.
“Sittin’ Home,” which turns up at the midpoint is where the CD, goes into meatier territory. Connected with a solid rap it’s the first song that has a narrative here while “Azz Everywhere” takes the party vibe in a salacious direction, outdoing all the other party anthems that came before it. “I Ain’t Takin’ No Shit” and “Walk Wit A Dip (original)” are even better as Freedia calls out a down low lover who won’t fess up to his girlfriend what he’s been dipping into. Hurt, dejected and discarded as the other lover? Hardly. Freedia calls him out for what he is, reducing him to the fool in the triangle whose been had.
Although the music is shot through with personality, brio and pride, the recordings don’t entirely hold up (they don’t leave much room musically or lyrically to take them in any way but at face value) but her show was really the point. Sunday night’s gigs were all about the booty. This was the night where straight and gay men and women freed their asses and didn’t bother to let their minds follow. Forty five minutes before Freedia hit the stage the show actually started when a shirtless, hirsute, bald, muscular, straight, trucker guy started shaking his bon-bon with such a vengeance that the festival security was discreetly replaced by police officers. It didn’t matter on several levels that the ass-shaking turned into a libidinous riot (I’m still recovering from having some four-foot-tall woman hump my leg as if the fate of the universe depended on it…) when Freedia invited audience members onstage for “Azz Everywhere.”
Never mind that naughty bits were exposed or that steam actually rose off the crowd or that Freedia herself was aghast by Chicago’s reaction to her and her music. Between her, her divas, guest dancers/rappers Lucky Lou (who ripped through the show with his new single “I’m Not Lucky”) and DJ Rusty Lazar, this funkfest turned into a riotous freak out in no time, defying gender, sexuality and politics. Gays, lesbians and hets shaking their booties with their hands in the air and their tongues hanging out of their mouths like jolly zombies …”One Nation Under A Groove?” I don’t think even George Clinton could have envisioned this.
The first time that I ever laid eyes on Chicago’s White Mystery was at last summer’s Taste of Chicago. There on a side stage stood Alex White, dressed in a business suit with her hair, a violent explosion of flaming red, wilting in her face, shredding notes on her electric guitar and screaming her lungs out. Her brother, Francis, I didn’t actually see—just flashes of more red hair behind his drum kit. At this point the Whites, after touring and gigging nonstop since then have emerged as this summer’s breakout band. It certainly doesn’t hurt to finally have their sophomore recording, Blood and Venom (www.whitemysteryband.com), is finally out and I have to say that it’s a pleasure to have there noise in the house.
“Noise” is actually putting it politely, since White Mystery construct monolithic slabs of shrieking guitar and thunderous percussion with enough echo to make them sound like they were recorded at the bottom of an empty well. In short, this record is meant to be enjoyed loud—really LOUD. What makes White Mystery’s sound so distinct and fun are the components that the two of them bring to the table. Alex’s guitar-playing is thick, driven, crunchy, snarling and extravagantly melodious. Better still, she has a voice like a siren (the mythical seductress, not a car alarm) that she seems to have loads of fun contorting and twisting. (She barks on “Snack Culture,” gets dreamy on “Pumpkin Creme” and bratty on “Smoke.”) Francis, on the other hand, pounds his skins with such intensity that it’s hard to differentiate his licks (probably intentional) and when his voice pops up on the second half of the CD on “Birthday” and “Party,” he sounds like a half-crocked rascal (ditto).
This, believe it or not, is with all that high decibel bamma-lamma that makes them kind of endearing and, well, cuddly. When Alex growls, “I don’t want to be a good girl/I just wanna be bad,” on “Good Girl,” she sounds like such a saucy vamp that you’re forced to hope with utmost sincerity that she gets her wish. “Party,” with its stair-stepping Phil Spector-like guitar figures and “Dead Inside,” a particularly lively rave-up about depression via a Pete Townshend guitar riff, nearly steal the album. Although the closer, “Kickin’ My Ball,” is as yummy a summertime single as we could hope for this year, it’s nearly upstaged by what came before it. Still, Blood and Venom, for all of White Mystery’s fury and passion, is such a joyous cyclone ride that you wonder what took them so long to record and release it.