Ndegeocello Song

Meshell Ndegeocello - Headline

I've got a couple more August cards in the well, beginning with this person, who is turning 56 today.

I've never seen her play as far as I can remember, but my friend from way back in Oakland days 20+ years ago lived in the same building as her at one time, and pointed out her car to me once in the garage.

As The Simulation would have it, it's also his birthday today... and he's also a bass player.

As synonomous with Groove as any bassist alive or not, today's berfday lady has actually been around for a good long time, when you think about it.

Her first record came out over 30 years ago, yet something about her constant, project-to-project explorations of the diverse and demandingly danceable seems eternally fresh and of the current times and moment somehow.

Always reliable for records that interpret social conscience through grooves deeper than ten Grand Canyons, her concerts are themselves often whole excursions into a kind of musical activism that takes place not by spoken political polemic, but by vibrational osmosis.

That is to say, what -- in the hands of less aware and sensitive artists -- might come across as too intentional and heavy-handed, comes through in her work effortlessly and without the listener having to wonder what she means.

It's a rare gift, and further proof -- were it necessary -- that the power of The One carries with it an ability to transmit to the hips what the mind resists.

So enough of my nonsense blather, let's get to the concert, shall we?

Where this comes from in terms of origin is anyone's guess, as it only exists in public as a YouTube video where the uploader is waxing melancholically about how he'd blow the Pope to have it as lossless audio.

But then that's what Baby Jesus created Soulseek for, amirite? One person had it on there, and when I examined it, it was so lossless it went way past the range of human hearing, causing my husband's German Shepherd to start a Soul Train line with my in-laws' beagle.

Meshell Ndegeocello

Auditorium Parco della Musica

Rome, Italy

5.13.2006

01 Tariq (Love Song #3)

02 Point of No Return

03 Come Smoke My Herb

04 Love Song #1

05 Headline

06 Evolution

07 band intros over unidentified theme

08 Michelle Johnson

09 Blacknuss (outro theme)

Total time: 58:17

Meshell Ndegeocello - bass & vocals

Daniel Jones - keyboards

Michael Severson - guitar

Gilmar Gomes - percussion

Mike Kelly - bass

Adam Deitch - drums

digital capture of a seemingly uncompressed broadcast of indeterminate origin, possibly from satellite TV or radio

spectral analysis goes past 22 kHz, making this well equivalent to a preFM source

slightly edited for dead air and retracked -- with volume from halfway through Track 02 to end of show increased +2.5 dB -- by EN, August 2024
391 MB FLAC/direct link

What kicks booty about this one is that she's just starting to twist up the material for her 2007 record, The World Has Made Me the Man of My Dreams, and because she's that sort of old-school legit she's gonna try it out on a live audience ready for something more familiar... and they're gonna love it despite the fact that it's just coming into shape. So you get a looseness that seems tight, if that makes sense.

Anyhow she was born in the appropriately tumultuous and questioning year of 1968 and is 56 today. I've always wanted to cover her, and not least because I'm always hyped to take a breather from the hypermasculinized sausage factory of this page and give some needed respect to the ladies (and the non-gender-conforming). Especially those who make music as impactful and honest as Meshell Ndegeocello does.--J.