HIT OR MYTH Catch Vernon Reid in Artificial Afrika, then see him in Living Colour next week.Photograph: Bill Bernstein
Think you’re culturally literate and stylistically diverse? Try keeping
up with Vernon Reid, longtime lead guitarist for resurgent hard-rock
combo Living Colour and a founder of New York’s influential Black Rock
Coalition. Phoning in from a hotel room in São Paolo, Brazil, where he
has two notebook computers whirring away on the desk, Reid references
Ridley Scott and Blade Runner, William Gibson and Neuromancer, the Star Wars planet-city Coruscant and noirish sci-fi cult flick Dark City
inside of five minutes, just to convey his impressions of a gray
morning in that sprawling city. Reid’s in Brazil as part of an ongoing
tour in support of The Chair in the Doorway, Living Colour’s
fifth and latest studio album, released on Megaforce this month. The
band’s first effort since its 2001 reunion effort, Collideøscope,
is subtle, bluesy, futuristic and funky. In other words, it’s a Living
Colour record—though certainly a more mature, introspective sibling for
the band’s brash 1988 debut, Vivid.
Having already
trekked around much of the United States and points well beyond, the
members of Living Colour—Reid, vocalist Corey Glover, bassist Doug
Wimbish and drummer Will Calhoun—will celebrate their new CD at the
Highline Ballroom on October 30. Back in the swing of things, Reid
blames Living Colour’s 1995 split on failing to pause for reflection
when bassist Muzz Skillings quit in 1992. “Men have a terrible time
expressing and dealing with emotions, and we didn’t grieve the loss of
our brother,” Reid admits. “We got together with one of the best
bassists in the world and also a personal friend, Doug Wimbish. But we
should have taken a time-out, and we didn’t.”
As was the case for so many New York bands, September 11, 2001, sparked Living Colour’s return to action with the bleak Collideøscope.
The band has toured regularly since, its relationships smoothed by the
passage of time. “Obviously we’re older; it was all many dreadlocks ago
for me,” Reid says of the difference between then and now. “We’ve come
back to embracing each other, which is a wonderful thing.”
New
material came slowly, delayed by side projects (Reid’s producing,
Glover’s theatrical work) and by all of the band members becoming
fathers. More fundamentally, a band that once made a statement just by
existing needed to find new bearings. “We are in this curious place
where we have an African-American President—what is our mission now?”
Reid relates. “In a lot of ways, the subject of The Chair in the Doorway
is, how come it took us so long to make a record? It’s based around an
aphorism that Corey came up with: We were bickering because we couldn’t
agree on the songs and what was going to be the single, and he would
say, ‘The problem is that the chair is in the doorway.’?”
Even with Living Colour humming along smoothly, Reid still pursues visions of his own. In his latest multimedia solo project, Artificial Afrika,
he deals with Western myths of Africa and the diaspora—“everything from
the Dark Continent to Aunt Jemima,” he says—with looping guitars,
breakbeat rhythms, borrowed video footage and homemade animation
inspired by Richard Linklater’s Waking Life. Akim Funk
Buddha, a South African spoken-word artist and dancer, and
drummer-producer Leon Lamont will also participate in the hour-long
string of vignettes. “Parts deal with African mythology,” Reid
explains. “Other parts deal with folk myths; some parts just deal with
textures—making my own version of electric mud cloth, if you will.”
As
for the greater goals he once pursued in the Black Rock Coalition, Reid
insists that much work remains to be done. “But when I think that my
friend William DuVall is now the lead singer of Alice in Chains, that
is staggering. Looking at TV on the Radio and its development—they are
our American Radiohead, I’m going to stick my neck out and say
that—there’s something wonderful about that. When we were first coming
into the mix, there was ‘Little Red Corvette’ and the Bad Brains’ ROIR
cassette, and that was it. There’s a lot more to do, a lot further
places to go. But when I look at what it is, as opposed to what it was
before this conversation was on the table, it really has been huge.”