On the Road Again
Live Reviews:

The Herbaliser
September 8, 1999
The Phoenix, Toronto

It just ain't cool to be an "acid jazz" band anymore, so no wonder The Herbaliser tries to avoid any musical tag other than "hip hop." Still, when beat fanatics Jake Wherry and Ollie Teeba crawl out of the studio to fill out their songs with six other musicians, the result is just about everything acid jazz should have been — and still can be.

In town for a DJ gig last year, Teeba explained the band's live concept: "We didn't want to just get the guys to get up on stage and then try to play what we've done with samples, because it wouldn't have had that same power. We thought, 'Well, if we keep some of the samples, strip the tracks down so it's like the fat beats, and maybe some noises and string parts that we can't recreate live. Things that could be played with keys, and things that could be played with horns, we'd get rid of all of that, so we always have beats running."

The result works extremely well, in large part thanks to the combination of prerecorded grooves with the ballistic funk of drummer Mickey Moody, who, stationed out of the audience's view behind Teeba and his turntables, is really the band's unsung hero. Wherry is slightly more visible, hopping from foot to foot like a benign penguin in Hawaiian shirt and hi-tops, while in front of him, hep keyboardist Kaidi "Shocker" Tatham and a three-piece horn section strut around playing nasty licks and exhorting the crowd to get off dey asses 'n' jam.

It can be hard to get any sizeable Toronto audience going, and even though opening act Roots Manuva and his floppy-hatted sidekick kept praising the "nice Toronto vibe" at the Phoenix, you've got to wonder whether the rappers were expecting a more happening atmosphere. It took a while even for the Herbaliser to get things going, but as their set went on, their infectious riffs, culled from everything from their first single ("The Real Killer") to material from their latest album Very Mercenary, broke down some serious inhibitions.

If anything was missing from the concert, it was a true frontman (although portly trumpeter Ralph Lamb did his best), or even the samples that Wherry and Teeba struck from their tracks. It's true Roots Manuva come back onstage to sing the track "Starlight"* in his mellifluous tones, and Ollie Teeba made a case for himself as the funkiest white man alive with some incredibly groovy scratching. However, for the most part, the octet was content to update the spirit of '70s Miles Davis bands (with funky soloing and daring interplay) without the kind of focal point that Davis presented.

Nonetheless, they've come a long way, as Teeba attests: "I admit, when Jake first was like, 'Let's do it live,' I was just ripping it, really -- the only time I'd ever performed onstage, live with a band, it was a total shambles. It was mostly the same band, but it was just a really bad gig with bad sound, and a bad singer, who in the middle of the track decided that she didn't want to sing the track anymore and just went, 'Naw, fuck it -- stop!' We're like, 'What?' So it was like, 'No, I can't go on stage live, never!' But Jake said, 'Nah, it'll be cool,' and it was."

Maybe their previous experience has given them a fear of frontmen, but surely there's someone worthy. Perhaps Toronto's Dream Warriors, who perform on the Herbaliser single "Road of Many Signs," could use some extra work these days . . .

P. S. To the dude in the homemade sponge Ninja Tune body armour: You've obviously got waaaaay too much time on your hands, but there's no way that bloated bouncer should have dragged you offstage after the band encouraged you to get up there. Oh, Toronto — where is the love?