“The show was tight, right, and out of sight,” said Behdad Bozorgnia ’08 in the aftermath of Eclectic’s funk concert last Saturday night. “The band’s music made me want to fill my soul with flesh and fill my flesh with soul.”
Indeed, much flesh became filled with soul (and perhaps a few other less natural substances) during the manic jams of the University’s very own funk factory, Kinky Spigot and the Welders. The thirteen-piece band packed the stage and won over soul music aficionados and initiates alike with two sets, playing Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder classics as well as tunes by James Brown, Al Green, and Gnarls Barkley to the delight of the energetic and sweaty crowd.
The concert room itself was filled almost to capacity, many students having dressed in preparation for a long dancing marathon: the boys in wife-beaters, the girls in sensible groove shoes. While the show started with many students standing about the room awkwardly, bobbing their heads or shuffling their feet, by the end of the first set, the catchy rhythms had become infectious.
Sly Stone’s “If You Want Me To Stay” was one of the first songs to get the audience dancing with spastic abandon. Students danced in half-circles of tight knit groups, or else found themselves partners with whom they could move more intimately.
“It was weird at first because I could tell people were having fun but they weren’t moving around and dancing which is what we wanted,” said Lilian Ruiz ’08, the group’s lead singer. “But by about the last quarter of the first set, I could feel people getting hyped so I just tried to feed off that and give it back out to everyone.”
All the band members showed stylish presence on the stage. The horn section, including Lucas Carrico ’08, John Hutchinson ’07, Nate Ash-Morgan ’08, and Andrew Fogliano ’09 brandished their instruments like seasoned pros, swaying and jumping along to the music. In between singing, Ruiz danced and jumped about the stage energetically. At times, she wielded her microphone to great effect, encouraging both audience and band members to up their energy levels even as the room grew stuffier with cigarette and marijuana smoke.
The band covered a wide history of funk and soul. The concert started off strong with a classic Maceo Parker tune “Soul Power,” and later finished with Gnarls Barkely’s recent hit, “Crazy.” While many students occasionally left the concert room for some fresh air on the Eclectic back porch, the blast of the four-piece horn section and the groove of the bass drew the porch dwellers back into the sweaty fray of boogying students.
“The project was started last year by Yoni Rabino, Marlon Bishop and myself,” said Vlad Gutkovich ’07, the band’s drummer. “We’ve been playing Funk music for years, and so we knew what getting down meant for an audience—a purely positive experience that lifts you up out of the daily grind and reminds you that life is good!”
Life indeed seemed good. Sing-alongs became an integral part of the night. Students bellowed out the choruses of the Jackson 5’s classic “I Want You Back,” at times drowning out the band. The concert was a showcase for the band members’ musical talents, and also a testament to their ability to start a party and keep it going.
“There was a dearth of good live party music at Wesleyan,” Gutkovich said, “so we decided to start a cover band—a cover band that would play the best-loved dance tunes we could think of. That’s the whole idea behind Kinky Spigot and the Welders: soul salvation by way of booty-shakin.”
“The band was locked in and on all night, and I think this was reflected in the smiling faces of the audience, who were singing along to every tune,” said Yoni Rabino ’07, bass player for the band. “From the stage, I saw the power of these awesome timeless songs to incite romance, and I’m pretty sure that Kinky Spigot and the Welders is the greatest way of getting people together and dancing since the invention of beer.”
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