The Record Club
Listening at its Finest
Last month my boy Khari shot me a link to an event at Public Records. At first glance it looked like it was a D’Angelo themed night in the upstairs of the venue. As someone with two functional ears, I love D’Angelo. If you don’t, there’s probably something disturbingly wrong with you and I need you to stay away from me and family. Still, I was confused as to why I would pay for a ticket to listen to him on vinyl at a bar. I am 31, but inside I already am the 53 year-old East African man with an injera belly that I am destined to be. This meant my gut reaction was "There's a record player at home" (a damn good one too). But I’m not afraid to admit when I’m wrong.
The Record Club is an event series which splits location between Los Angeles & New York. The idea behind it is to provide an immersive listening experience for iconic albums on the best hi-fi systems available, while also breaking down the context in which they were created and their lasting impact. The night I went to catch D’Angelo’s Voodoo, the series was celebrating its 2nd year anniversary, and 30th session overall. The host, Free, clearly spent an excruciating amount of time researching D'Angelo's life and career and his enthusiasm for the subject material shone through. Clips were seamlessly spliced into the evening by Record Club’s DJ, Eddie, from interviews given by people involved with the album which broke down how they approached it. It was like being inside of a museum exhibit. My favorite bit was from a Questlove interview where he told the story of how he and D’Angelo first met at a Roots concert in the mid-90's and first formed the partnership they perfected on Voodoo. In the middle of the show Quest went completely off-script and started playing a drum solo from the most obscure Prince song ever because he knew D'Angelo was in the audience and would lose his mind. And he did. That is how nerdy those guys were about music - they were setting traps for each other.
The best part about a night dedicated to intentional listening is exactly that. Each of the 4 sides of the album were played without interruption from either the host or audience. Nobody makes a sound and people take in the music played by speakers taller than them while they sip from their drinks and relax. Asking a crowd of people to silently listen to a vinyl record requires you to completely captivate them. Again, we're talking about Voodoo here. Part of why D'Angelo named the album that is because when he recorded it in Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Lady studio in New York, he wanted to conjure up the spirit of Hendrix and other legends that had recorded music in those halls. The man quite literally used the exact same organ that Stevie Wonder used to record Talking Book in that very room decades before him. He covers "Feel Like Makin' Love" by Roberta Flack on the album. They were channeling something. As I looked around the room I could tell that it came through and swept over the people there
I don't know what more this event could have done to bring Voodoo to life for me besides having D'Angelo levitate into the room with an organ and perform it live for us on the spot. It gave me such an appreciation for what a massive undertaking the album was. There may be no bigger indication of how timeless a record is than by its ability to bring together dozens of strangers to listen to it in complete silence 25 years after its release.
Art is one of, if not the greatest thing humanity has to offer. Moments like these where people come together to celebrate it are necessary. Get in touch with that humanity with everyday people, even if they're complete strangers. Record Club will be back in April with sessions for Roy Ayers & Joni Mitchell in NYC.
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