Benjamin Booker, Mac Demarco, and Charles Bradley and His Extraordinaries at the House of Vans 6/12/14

Benjamin Booker, Mac Demarco, and Charles Bradley and His Extraordinaries

The House of Vans

June 12, 2014

Lately, I’ve been trying to balance the demands of my full-time job with running this site full-time and having something of a social life, and the one way that I can even mange it is by not sleeping much, using iCalendar as much as humanly possible, and doing some crucial blog-related work on the commutes back and forth,

But a just a couple of weeks ago, I was at the House of Vans to catch one of the stranger bills I’ve come across this year, Benjamin Booker, Mac Demarco and the Screaming Eagle of Soul, Charles Bradley and His Extraordinaires. Benjamin Booker wasn’t that impressive to me; in fact, his sound and stage presence reminded me quite a bit of the London Souls – in other words, the Jimi Hendrix Experience mold, which we’ve all seen and heard about 10,000 times since 1971. Although most of the crowd was there for Mac Demarco, whose whole stage presence and sound made me feel ten years or so too old, it was Charles Bradley’s larger-than-life presence and earnestness.

Interestingly, Bradley and His Extraordinaires managed to change things up doing totally different versions of most of his recorded material. Songs where done in different keys, different tempos and with slightly different chord progressions. It kept me on my toes trying to figure out which song was which and it created different interpretations to material that I hadn’t thought of – for example, a smoldering rendition of “Confusion," one of my favorite tracks on the album.

Check out some photos from the show below.

Benjamin Booker