DAVE MULLEN & BUTTA
At Shrine - NYC (4/18/08)
The FUNKIEST horny horn in NYC, baba....Dave "Mahoney" Mullen!! JUST
LIKE BUTTA, BABY BABA!!!!!
At
12:00 midnight, the Harlem neighborhood was shaken down to its core by some of
the funkiest grooves coming out of this bar spot named SHRINE.....the grooves
were coming from the stage where the funky saxman Dave Mullen and his group
BUTTA were throwing down a song named "Mahoney's Way", featuring Eric
Jay Pierce (aka Snakefoot) on turntables and rap, hot saxophone riffing by Dave
and nice wah-wah rhythm guitarisms by Groovalicious!!
First of all, this was
one of the best places for some good funk music.....there was such a positive
vibe in the place. The people that showed up (95% black audience!!!) were
TOTALLY into the funk/jazz music....people were not afraid to get up and dance
their butts off...people felt the music. It was almost a spiritual thing...unlike
clubs like The Groove where everybody just sit still and clap. Shrine has a
smaller stage than The Groove, but a bigger dancefloor area...and PEOPLE USED
IT!!!
"March of the Roaches" sounded good....and this is where two
beautiful nubian queens came over and started dancing...I'm talking about
dance-theatre style of dancing....very graceful stuff! "For the Love
of Money" started with the funky bass riffs of Don Martin...people started
throwing money onto the stage; there was so much money that someone placed a
pitcher onstage and people began filling up the pitcher with money! The
R&B/inspirational "Lost Souls" didn't feature Margarita Bravo on
vocals (because she wasn't feeling well enough to sing), so Snakefoot basically
rapped the lyrics of the song....actually, it was very, very good (although I
still miss Margarita's version)!! "Get It Together" (the James Brown
tune) featured the funky rhythm guitarisms of Groovalicious and a tight rhythm
section....this is the song where one Dr. Brookenstein was doing the
"Mashed Potatoes" with one of the "nubian queen" dancers!
AND, LET ME TELL YOU....SHE WORKED HIM LIKE A PART-TIME JOB....I THINK HE WAS
MORE TIRED THAN A ONE-LEGGED MAN IN A KICK-BUTT FIGHT!!! "Like
Rashaan" was DA BEST FUNKY TUNE with a good organ solo....and a terrifying
percussion solo (especially the nasty timbales solo) by Ronnie Roc! The first
set was over at 1:30am.
Vocalist/DJ Snakefoot posing for the camera!
BUTTA started their second set (at 2:00am) with
good old-school funk, followed by some "Resurrected Be-Bop" that got
everyone dancing their butts off.....TALK ABOUT SOME HOT-BUTTA FUNK!!!! YOU
COULD SOP THE BUTTA UP WITH SOME BISCUITS, BABA!!! (OOPS, BUT WATCH THAT
CHOLESTEROL!!) The percussion work was great on the super-funky BUTTA-flavored
tune "Squid"....so was the heavy turntable scratching (by Snakefoot
on the Wheelz of Steel) and the profoundly nasty bass riffing by Don. By the
end of the night (around 2:30am), Shrine was left smoldering by all of that
BURNING BUTTA FUNK!!
Click here for pictures of
Dave Mullen & BUTTA
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