What’s Your Favorite Colour Baby? Living Colour!
This weekend was full of Colour.
On Saturday night, Vince, Kip and I enjoyed a ménage à brois and went to Irving Plaza to check out Living Colour live. Now, seeing Living Colour in concert is always a special occasion because they are, no joke, one of the best live bands on the planet today. But this was an extra special special occasion, because —
- The band was performing Vivid, their legendary debut album, to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of its release.
- We were popping Kip’s Living Colour live cherry.
Unsurprisingly, a little sound mix troubles early in the evening aside*, Living Colour didn’t disappoint.
There were so many highlights I don’t even know quite where to begin, so I’m just going to make a completely random-ass list:
- The revelation that Vince’s personal favorite song from the album, “Middle Man,” was the first song guitarist Vernon Reid and vocalist Corey Glover ever wrote together.
- Hearing Vivid tracks that the band doesn’t often play live anymore, including “Which Way to America,” “Funny Vibe,” their cover of the Talking Heads’ “Memories Can’t Wait” (a perfect example of how to make a cover a band’s own while staying true to the original song), and the ballad “Broken Hearts.” Bassist Doug Wimbish, who joined Living Colour in time for 1993’s Stain, dedicated the latter song to original bassist Muzz Skillings, and played Skillings’ original bass solo more or less note-for-note. Classy touch!
- Glover — whose voice still sounds beyond-amazing — breaking down crying during the intro for “Open Letter (To a Landlord).” Not that I’m glad he was moved to tears, but… well, yeah, I guess I’m glad he was moved to tears. It’s nice to know the song actually carries some meaning for him, y’know?
- Three words — SUGAR. HILL. GANG:
- Something about as common in modern times as a dodo sighting — an encore about which I actually care.
But Living Colour’s big weekend didn’t end there! The following night, the wrestlemaniacs at Metal Injection report, the band performed “Cult of Personailty” at WWE Wrestlemania XXIX as an intro for the wrestler CM Punk:
AHHHHHH so good.
I’m going to stop gushing like a fanboy now and just remind you that THERE ARE STILL THREE SHOWS on the Vivid anniversary tour, and if you’re in a position to go to one of them and you don’t, you have no goddamn good sense whatsoever. Remaining dates are:
April 11 – Park West – Chicago, IL – eTix
April 12 – The Magic Bag – Ferndale, MI – TicketWeb
April 13 – The Opera House – Toronto, ON – TicketFly
And I know we have some younger readers here at MetalSucks who were still either infants or sperm when Vivid came out. For those readers who have yet to discover this amazing album, I say: THE TIME IS NOW.
*Vernon Reid was wwwwaaaayyyyy too low in the mix, especially during “I Want to Know.” Some dude a few feet ahead of us in the crowd programmed his phone to display scroll the message “FIX THE MIX TURN UP THE GUITARS” across his phone in bright letters, and then held up said phone, backwards, in hopes that the sound guy would see it. I don’t know if the sound guy did see it and that’s why the mix got better, or if it was just a coincidence, but I certainly appreciated my fellow fan’s efforts to correct the issue!
