Do you remember being excited? For something other than Dark Knight, I mean (also: doesn’t get released in the UK for another week, I don’t want to hear about it). Like, there was a time when going to see a band play was the highlight of my whatever- I would get the tickets way in advance, stick ‘em to the refrigerator, stare at them every day before I poured the milk just to make sure that they still said nine inch nails or the twilight singers or whoever it was I was desperate to see, that the words hadn’t melted off somehow. But now I am twenty-eight years old and I’ve seen a hundred million shows and it’s become a little less magical. Most of the bands I’m eager to see aren’t the kind you need to book tickets for way in advance, and a lot of them are people I know personally, which means that sometimes, rather than quaking with anticipation before the show starts, I’m going out for Chinese food with them, instead. Not because I’m, like, super-connected or anything, but because my tastes are kinda obscure and I’ve been performing long enough to have done shows with a bunch of people who make music I’m interested in.

Anyway. I bring this up because I was really excited a couple weeks ago for a show. It was a nice feeling. One of my favorite records of the past couple years is for lovers, dreamers, and me by Alice Smith. It’s a really soulful, funky affair with a live band and great hooks. It also came out three months before back in black by Amy Winehouse, and I thought that was a shame, because that record was such a hit, but surely there wasn’t room in the hearts of the world for two soulful-women-with-live-band acts. Bad luck, Alice, but Winehouse was better connected, and her record was produced by Mark Ronson…

Also, she’s white. Because it turns out that there’s nearly an infinite appetite for soulful women with live bands, if they’re white women. Post the Winehouse flameout, you’ve got a pair of quick successors on the exact same schtick- Duffy and Adele are both hot shit right now, doing the exact same thing. And the novelty is that, like, those voices are coming out of little white girls is pretty rad, huh?

And it’s just a shame, because it’s 2008 and, you know, in a world that’s been obsessed with hip hop for almost three decades, I’d kinda hoped we were past needing a Pat Boone to make black music safe for the suburbs. White hip hop never Elvis’ed it out, like so many predicted when Eminem broke, but things are maybe a little different if you’re a woman. A big part of why white audiences didn’t all jump ship for white rappers is because white kids who want to be black can’t get the same vicarious thrill from listening to other white dudes who want to be black. If that’s not a factor, though, white still trumps black.

And, I mean, Amy Winehouse’s record is pretty good- at least the Ronson tracks, the few that he didn’t produce are pretty bland- but Duffy? Adele? More soul at a polka convention. Weird Al Yankovic singing in a falsetto is more authentic than that shit.  But I can’t say it’s deeply surprising that a pretty blonde girl is going to do well for herself, or that a couple bland white singers coasting on the sound of another white singer is going to do better than a black woman. It’s just disappointing. It’s not really about Alice Smith, so much as it’s just fucked up that the new faces of soul music in 2008 are all white. Especially when there are talents like Smith out there struggling to find an audience.

As for the show- Alice Smith was amazing. She played with a three-piece band, a pretty basic set-up that left out the piano from the record- just guitar, bass, drums, and her voice. It was her first UK tour, and pretty much the cutest thing ever was the fact that she left out all the swear words because her mom was in the front row. She was really possessed of her own voice in a cool way, something that a lot of singers aren’t. I’ve seen, like, Jill Scott sort of get showy in belting one out, and it doesn’t come off all that well. The way she sang- to compare her to a white woman who does a totally different kind of music- it reminded me a lot of Neko Case, totally confident and possessed of her voice as an instrument. I hope she hits Texas in the fall.

Alice Smith - Desert Song
Alice Smith - Gary Song

(images from a different London show via this dude’s flickr. if you’re that dude, hi, hope you don’t mind.)