Kool & the Gang entertain with past hits
Kool & the Gang entertain with past hits
By Paul W. Blair
JAKARTA (JP): The stage at the Blue Note Jakarta is fairly spilling over with musicians this week -- eleven of them, all told. They're members of Kool & the Gang, in town until tomorrow evening to please local fans who well remember their many past hits.
Their opening night show, for instance, included Cherish, Get Down On It, Joanna, Victory, Too Hot and Jungle Boogie (the last featured on the soundtrack of the current smash film Pulp Fiction).
Four of the current group have been part of Kool & the Gang since 1969: lead guitarist Charles Smith, alto saxophonist Dennis Thomas, drummer George Brown and bassist/leader Robert "Kool" Bell. Members with somewhat less seniority include Clifford Adams on trombone (himself a fifteen-year veteran), Odeen Mays Jr. on keyboards, Skip Martin on trumpet, Shawn McQuillar on guitar, Pete Rudd on drums, Gerard Harris on guitar and Mary Elaine Verrett doing back-up vocals. It's pretty much the same ensemble heard on Unite, the band's most recent compact disc.
Almost everyone either sings lead from time to time or else lends a hand on catchy group vocal chants. In fact, part of the fun during any Kool & the Gang show is watching various band members hustle from one part of the stage in mid-song to another to assume some new vocal or instrumental role. This definitely isn't a group that just stands there. There's actual choreography to go with each song, too, though the dimensions of the Blue Note Jakarta stage pretty much limits it to some eye-catching arm and hand movements by Smith and Adams up front.
"Yeah, some of that stuff was originally worked out for us years ago by a choreographer," says Bell, "but we've added our own little touches over the years."
In 1964, when Robert Bell and his brother Khalis were still high-schoolers, they co-founded their first group -- The Jazziacs -- back home in Jersey City, New Jersey. Over the next several years, they became in turn The New Dimension Band, The Soultown Band and, in 1969, Kool & the Gang.
"At the time we were coming up in Jersey City, we got to know some of the more influential jazz musicians of that period, people like Pharoah Sanders, Leon Thomas and John Coltrane. They tended to intellectualize their music and seemed very committed to what they were doing. I suppose much of their positive approach rubbed off on us."
"Then when we were the Soultown Band, we worked as a back-up group for some of the local singers who were doing Motown material. After they'd leave the stage we'd do instrumental versions of those songs, with our horns in place of their voices."
"That's really how we started combining jazz and R & B. Around 1968, we all started listening hard to James Brown and the Famous Flames, along with Sly and the Family Stone. Their approach definitely influenced us when we became Kool & the Gang."
Robert Bell and company have traveled lots of miles together in the past quarter-century and sold something like 40 million records along the way. They worked a lot across Europe during 1994, mostly doing concerts and music festivals; played at the Blue Notes in Japan as well as dates in Taiwan and Thailand; then ended the year with twelve nights of shows at the Sahara in Las Vegas.
"Sometimes," says Bell, "we perform at corporate parties sponsored by major firms like IBM, Digital and General Motors in conjunction with their annual conventions. At those kinds of things, we're playing to bunches of baby-boomers who know all of our past hits. To tell you the truth, we haven't worked all that much in the United States over the last seven years or so. We've been really active overseas. But now we're putting together a reunion tour along with J.T. Taylor, the singer who used to be with us before he went out on his own. That should keep us busy in the U.S. for awhile."
Bell, a Muslim, says that Wednesday morning marked the first time he's ever begun the fasting month in a predominantly Muslim country. Yet it's certainly not his first visit to Jakarta. "We first appeared here in 1982. I only remember that it was a pretty small theater and we did just a single night in the course of an East Asian swing. Then we were back here in 1990 at the Sahid Jaya as part of an entourage that also included Mohammad Ali. Audiences are always great here, very warm and very responsive."
After Indonesia, the next stop for Kool & the Gang is Germany. First, though, they'll play concerts in Bandung, at Bale Pakuan, on Feb.5; in Semarang, at Plaza Simpang 5, on Feb. 7; in Solo, at Graha Wisata Niaga, on Feb. 8; in Yogyakarta, in Natour Garden, on Feb. 9; in Malang, at the Prince Hotel, on Feb. 11; in Surabaya, at the Hyatt, on Feb. 12; and in Bali, at the Nusa Dua Amphitheater, on Feb. 14.