Local Music
LOCAL MUSIC
A View From Nowhere
March 1996--AGENDA--9
By Alan Goldsmith
The human voice and great songs. If there"s anything l'm a sucker for in the realm of rock & roll and pop It's a great songwriter with a great voice. Sure, it's cool as anything to hear heavenly sonically dangerous guitars and hypnotic synths or (dramatic pause) instrumental solos. ..but, my first love is a soulful singer, unplugged. pouring out their guts, the fewer chords the better. The phrase - the singer not the song - is half right: It's the singer and the song and while Ann Arbor is loaded with scores of examples of this sort of thing, only a handful really stand out on an entire other plane.
This month, kudos go to The Ark for showcasing two of the above: Sophia Hanifi and Brian Lillie. Both spring from straight ahead rock & roll bands - Ms. Hanifi from the late, lamented classic Ann Arbor group of the 1980s Map of the World which had a CD release on Atlantic Records and Mr. Lillie as frontman for the lesser known but inventively hot band Maitries from the recent past. And this month, youll get a rare shot at getting to discover the undiscovered by checking out their gigs.
For Sophia Hanifi, The Ark on March 7 (show time 8 pm) will be her first scheduled performance in years. After dropping out of the music scene to finish her BFA, Hanifi took guitar lessons for ayear, writing tunes for Just instrument and voice, while occasionally sitting in with brother Khalid Hanifi's more harder edged Kiss Me Screaming.
Members of KMS will be backing her up at The Ark date, but Sophia sees herself in a learning phase. I've been learning how to write Just simple things, so my voice is the focus," says Hanifi. While in the Map Of the World days, it was the roar of the guitars and the sweet, unique Everly Brothers-like harmonies with her brother: now ifs more of her own voice, with touches of harmony in an unplugged setting.
"I've written a number of new things, but the set will be a split between those and old MOTW songs [which Sophia co-authored]. Ifs mostly rooted in country with an alternative sort of flavor," she says.
The voice. Ifs filled with a spark in the same way an old Patsy Cline 45 sounds on a barroom Juke at 2 am. There's a grainy touch, at a counterpoint with a soaring, clear folk edge to boot. Ifs addicting in the same way listening to Billie Holiday's voice or Natalie Merchanfs voice is. There you go: imagine those three sounds and then imagine another that matches that level of class. Sophia Hanifi.
If Hanifi is angelically gritty, then Brian Lillie is down-in-the-gutter, low-key gritty. His CD of last year. Waking Up In Traffic was the best local release of 1995 and on each re-listening, it just keeps getting better as the months go by. If you want to play the pick-three-artists-to-give-you-a-clue you might as well toss in the towel in much the same way as Sophia Hanifi defies this defining.
Sure, maybe Dylan, maybe John Hiatt or John Prine... but.. .Lillie may fit on your CD collection shelf in the same company as these boys, but to say he is in the same ballpark would be false info. There's a modernism, a twist that can't be charted with a map.
Back to The Ark gig (March 14 at 8 pm). The folk venue, with the low lighting and perfectly quite pay attention aura promises to be a great match for Lillie's low-key tales of broken hearts and redemption. If Hanifi's voice evokes a cool, after hours juke, Lillie's calls to the brain sitting alone in the dark just before the sunrise, wishing you could bring an old lover back but knowing you can't.
Sophia Hanifi and Brian Lillie - both their songs and their voices - will most likely change the way you look at the world. What else do you want from "pop" music?
While we're on the topic of voices. let's not leave out garageland Stax-Volt killer r&b voices. From one such rock & roll voice Dan Mulholland. ex-of The Urbations. The Navarones. and The Watusies. from his handwritten (on the back of a Joe's Star Lounge gig poster from eons ago) press release: "Watusies reunion! attention! alter 12 years Tusies are coming together tor a one time gig 'somewhere around here' soon - all original members are still in love with each other, no one is fat, bald, jacked up on drink or drugs!"
Mulholland's recent 45s with his band The Navarones might give you some idea of the glory days of The Watusies but.. .if you can"t track down any of the now out-of print cassettes or their one cut on the second Cruisin' Ann Arbor disk from the '80s, then you're in for a Jolt... once this gig happens. With Mulholland on vocals (and the twin guitar machine guns of Chris Cosello and Drew Howard along with Oni Werth on bass) The Watusies were (and probably are) pure American roots rock & roll that will blow you away in the same way a mutated cross between Otis Redding and the MC5 might. No gig in March, but keep your eyes open for April.
Cool news I think: The legendary Iggy Pop. the man who needs no introduction, has been having recent talks with Ron and Scott Asheton (guitar and drums respectively) about a reunion of The Stooges original lineup, the most dangerous band of all time. Keep your fingers crossed. (Of course, bassist Dave Alexander merged with the universe in the middle of the 1970s...RIP) The
The View From Nowhere, AGENDA, 220 S. Main Street, A2, MI. 48 1 04 or e-mail to ALANNARBOR@AOL.COM.