They Took Us There
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Pops Staples left Winona, Mississippi, to work in the Chicago stockyards in the 30s, but by the end of the next decade he’d formed a gospel group with three of his children, who were between the ages of 11 and 15. The Stapleses would become one of the music’s best-selling and most innovative acts, recording for seminal (and secular) labels like Vee-Jay, Riverside, Epic, Stax, and Curtis Mayfield’s Curtom. The group’s mix of down-home harmonies and Pops’s trademark bluesy, vibrato-laden guitar licks set them apart early on, but by the early 60s their music had begun to reflect the civil rights struggle. They gained entree to the pop charts with a couple of message songs, “Why? (Am I Treated So Bad)” and Stephen Stills’s “For What It’s Worth,” in the 60s, and in the 70s they scored eight Top 40 hits, including “Respect Yourself” and the number one “I’ll Take You There.” The group continued to perform through much of the 90s, and both Pops and his youngest daughter, Mavis Staples, carried on solo careers as well. Pops died in December 2000.
Big Daddy Kane is a legitimate living legend, even if he hasn’t done much for us lately. Although he doesn’t get the credit that Public Enemy, Rakim, N.W.A, and Boogie Down Productions–all of whom also arrived in the late 80s–regularly reap, last year’s The Very Best of Big Daddy Kane (Rhino) made clear that at his peak Kane had few peers. The collection includes six tracks from his classic 1988 debut, Long Live the Kane, where his bullshit-free delivery was amplified by Marley Marl’s austere, hard funk production. By the early 90s success had blunted his hunger and he began recording duets with Barry White; don’t expect a renewed appetite when he performs on Saturday, February 23, at Isaac Hayes. Fellow 80s vet Slick Rick also performs.
Memorandum, a multimedia work about information overload by the Japanese performance collective Dumb Type, runs from Thursday, February 28, to Sunday, March 3, at the Museum of Contemporary Art; like the group’s last MCA show, OR, it features the breathtaking digital sound design of Ryoji Ikeda. His music for the piece is available on the Japanese label CCI Recordings; its shuffle of low-end throb, industrial hum, percussive white noise, melodic repetition, and spoken word holds up on its own, but if OR was any indication, it will yield new depths when integrated into Dumb Type’s sensory assault.
