Sunday 08.28.11: CHARLES BRADLEY / HANDS @ Echo

8pm / $8 adv; $10 dos / all ages

Charles Bradley ||Listen || Watch|| MP3
You’ve got to hand it to the folks at Daptone Records — they find talent in seemingly unpromising places: a Rikers Island prison guard/wedding singer (Sharon Jones), somebody’s maid (Naomi Shelton) and now a James Brown impersonator, Charles Bradley. Word has it Bradley worked on the plumbing in the Daptone offices before being “discovered” performing under the stage name “Black Velvet” at a tiny club in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

Like his labelmates, Bradley had harbored hopes of performing for a wider audience, but his dream was deferred for more than 40 years from the time he first saw James Brown at the Apollo in the 1960s.

Bradley appears to have suffered enough hard knocks to give his howling soul music a haunted quality. He cried the day I met him, overcome with excitement at his first big radio appearance and still suffering from the loss of his brother — the man who believed in Bradley’s dream enough to insist that he follow it.

Surely, soul music lovers will be glad he did.NPR

Hands ||Watch
“The new music made by the hands of Hands – the L.A. quartet of
Geoffrey Halliday, Ryan Sweeney, Sean Hess and Alex Staniloff – feels
more like a cumulation (rather than derivation) of the a lot of the
last decade’s indie-rock. Synths and samples do battle with insistent
beats and tricky polyrhythms, with Halliday’s tenor commingling with
Sweeney’s choral backup vocals and a thin veneer of reverb. Hands
released their “Cities” EP in 2008, but their recent live shows reveal
the quartet to be pursuing a more experimental (and less acoustic) pop
bent. Foreign Born, Animal Collective, Vampire Weekend, a dozen or so
Brooklyn acts – a lot of bands could be name-checked here, but Hands
are worth holding out your arms for.”Buzz Bands LA

**** CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH has unfortunately had to cancel due to Hurricane Irene. Official statement from the band is below:
People of Los Angeles,

Due to the fact that all of our flights have been canceled, there is no possible way for us to make it to LA to play our show at the Echoplex. We were really looking forward to coming out west and seeing all your lovely faces! Between Sunset Junction and Irene it’s been a rough couple of days. We’ll make it back to LA soon, we promise.

Band