Black Magic From The Amen Corner: The Black Crowes’ voodoo resurrection Kandia Crazy Horse, Creative Loafing, 9th January 1999 sent in by David Montgomery from the Crowesnest: http://qfg.tierranet.com/crowesnest.html Jesus of Nazareth Chris Robinson ain't. Some detractors drew a purely visual comparison along these lines in recent years, when the Black Crowes' singer/songwriter wore his hair and beard long. Whether he was impersonating the temple-clearing carpenter or just the late-and-sainted Allman Brothers’ bassist Berry Oakley, Christianity and religion in general are ideas integral to any discussion of Atlanta's most famous rock 'n' roll band. Mostly Southern sons – Robinson and his guitarist brother Rich were particularly raised in the church – the Crowes have replaced formal faith with the most potent legacy of late modernist spirituality: rock'n'roll. Rock, a veritable Holy Ghost in the sonic trinity of African music that includes blues and gospel, has weakened considerably in the '90s. Hip-hop Nation 2000 prevails in the pop landscape now, with ATLiens Outkast and Goodie Mob blowing down the walls of a classic rock Jericho. Nonetheless, the Crowes' anti-authoritarian and hedonistic catechism – brokedown on four previous albums collected on their new box set Sho' Nuff – has consistently drawn converts to their shadow version of the Black Aesthetic. Their five discs, including the brand new By Your Side, meet the Black Aesthetic criterion: According to scholar/activist Ron Karenga in Black Cultural Nationalism, "All Black art... must have three basic characteristics which make it revolutionary... It must be functional, collective and committing." Describes the Crowes' approach succinctly. And makes them cultural mulattos as much as the local LaFace's stellar singer Corey Glover. Quiet as it's kept, the Black Crowes' nonpareil rock'n'roll is as black as Busta Rhymes'. Indeed, Stagger Lee, Bronzeville's most enduring trickster/night tripper, haunts their best songs like a Voodoo deity. Chris Robinson embodies Stagger Lee's provocative (and potentially explosive) impulses throughout By Your Side, the band's first new release since '96's Three Snakes and One Charm. Themes revolve around the catharsis of expelled bitterness, love lost and regained, and sins laid out for friends' pardon. With heavy grooves and the heady blend of decadence and tradition, By Your Side's 11-song cycle brings the Crowes full circle to the sound and sensibilities of their earliest period, while the best songs – including ‘Welcome to the Goodtimes’ and ‘Go Tell the Congregation’ – extend Three Snakes's vital experimentation. Indeed, on the latter composition, Robinson's fleet-footed sinner self is healed of his recent blues by the euphoric response of the band's soaring Amen Corner. Avian imagery – mostly forged in slavery flight songs – flows from common regional heritage into the Robinson brothers' Promethean hearts, and masquerades as invocations of love's redemptive balm. For those alienated by the jazz-like improvisation of 1994's Amorica, By Your Side returns to the immediate hard rock aspect of the Robinsons' songwriting characterized by early hit ‘Jealous Again’. ‘Diamond Ring’ (which gives props to Willie Mitchell, as ‘Goodtimes’ does to Allen Tousaint) and 'Virtue And Vice’, meanwhile, keep the funkateers and metallic mountain mystics quite content. The band's sartorial rockstar glamour has also resurfaced. Eschewing the "most rock'n'roll band in the world" hype and rife speculations of their embrace of entertainment, it remains difficult to prophesy what the Black Crowes – now including new guitarist Audley Freed and bassist Sven Pipien – will become next century. The predictability of recent Sho' Nuff Tour set lists has left some loyalists disgruntled. Nevertheless, the upcoming global "Souled Out" shows should be a high of electrically charged eclecticism, restoring the medicine-show call-to-prayer vibe of concerts that endeared the band to the faithful. Back on the Voodoo tip: It is the protean nature of the Crowes' urgent and attitude-spiced rock 'n' roll that makes their work vital and relative to the African spirit that obliquely animates their recordings. This is the prototype for the American myth spun by the Crowes: Spirituality with one foot in the gutter and the other in the stars. Such sacred profanity also imbues their songcraft and fashions their Amorican idyll. The band's assumption from Atlanta into the American cosmos has produced a gospel of individualism and intensity for their cultish audience. While this evangelism of freedom works on the crowd, the Crowes – in the current rock climate – war with the internal dilemmas that plague commercial artists committed to self-liberation. Rock 'n' roll, a largely Southern manifestation of the Voodoo that plagues white men seeking the African aorta's mysteries, enlivens its hosts, these irascible Georgia gris-gris men. They are thus spurred on their dance through the cross-currents between angels and devils. Salvation remains beyond reach yet it's premature to suppose that the sextet (octet with sweethearts-of-soul backing singers) has attained its peak. Despite hints that the close of the group's first decade may have been marred by a Faustian pact echoing Robert Johnson's, By Your Side's highlights indicate artists on the ascendant. The millennium's eve will see the Black Crowes continue to bring the funk to hi-tech hillbillies and freaky-deaky cultural nationalists alike. At the crossroads, the band is choosing the revival of three-minute praisesongs to achieve timelessness. "Everybody's got a little light under the sun," goes a much-beloved Parliament refrain. "Sit back and watch my divine spark flash," Chris Robinson sings. These are the articulations of spirit decentralized, evolving with the turbulent times and empowering the mad Dionysian revelers with mean streaks and loose booties. Inferring the utter joy of midsummer madness when, like Roy Ayers says, "everybody loves the sunshine" and as the Crowes testify on By Your Side, it's always "time for a serenade." When indeed everythang is everythang. from the Crowesnest: http://qfg.tierranet.com/crowesnest.html