Boogie Nights
Bring in da funk, bring in da bucks: backstage with Dr. Zhivegas, St. Louis' most popular -- and derided -- cover band
"You have to make it interesting to play," echoes trumpeter Kasimu. "Four nights a week for four years, playing the same songs: I look at it as a learning experience. I always like Michael Jackson stuff for the horns, so playing some of this stuff, you learn about song forms and arrangements. It's pretty cool in that respect."
"I used to despise 'Celebration' so much," adds saxophonist Lew Winer, "because I played it back when the Cardinals were using it, back in the '80s, when it was the thing, and then in other bands. We just kept playing playing playing it. And it just wore on me so bad, like, 'I hate that song.' And now I'm over it. I've accepted it. I've mellowed out over it. But I was losing it for a while there."
In the Cadillac on the way to Springfield, Chickey, Muriel and James have a theory about Lenny Kravitz. They claim that he's a fashion thief, that he secretly admires Dee Dee James to the point that, each time Kravitz flies James to New York City for a jam session (which is a few times a year, at least), the superstar guitarist wants not only to play with James but to take mental notes on James' style. Then, once James is back in St. Louis, Lenny cops his look. The theory sounds far-fetched at first, but the three build a convincing case.
The first time James noticed Kravitz borrowing his style, James was still living in LA, playing with Bootsy Collins and doing session work. James is a vintage-car enthusiast, and his pride and joy is a classic 1965 Thunderbird Landau. Once, James was driving up to a jam that Kravitz had arranged, and the two arrived at the same time. "Kravitz saw me in that car, and he flipped, man. He was, like, 'Where'd you get that?'" The two talked about the car, says James: "Next thing I know, I'm looking through Rolling Stone, and there's Lenny Kravitz posing in front of his new car, and it's just like mine." Same thing happened with James' hair, which he wears in an Afro. Kravitz had dreadlocks forever, but immediately after another jam session, James turned on the TV to watch the Grammys. There was Lenny, playing guitar with Madonna, and he had a new haircut: an Afro. Same thing with the Wrangler shirts and jeans James wears, which Kravitz copped. And the Prada sunglasses. It's happened too often to be coincidence, they say.
Artists, of course, are always stealing somebody else's style. It's part of the game, and no creative person comes up with ideas out of thin air. But after dropping bits and pieces of others' fashion and personality and accent into your vessel, what pours back out should be transformed, made into something completely unique. At least ideally.
Zhivegas' Frankie Muriel is a fine example, a fantastic mimic. Onstage he's an actor, casually walking onto the stage as he's done countless times before, puffing out his chest and playing the part of the megalomaniacal rock star. He wraps a feather boa around his mic stand and plays it, à la James Brown or Prince. When he's singing a Prince song, he sounds like Prince (though he can't dance like Prince -- Muriel's more restrained, more relaxed). He can't grunt and groan like Brown, but he can raise three fingers to the band just like the Man, and Zhivegas will respond with three perfectly placed instrumental hits. He can get all low like Sly Stone during "Everyday People," get all sassy during Rick James' "Superfreak" and party hearty with Kool & the Gang during "Get Down on It." If he's suffering through it, which at times offstage he seems to be, Muriel doesn't let it show onstage. He's acting, and he's doing it well.
But Muriel is obviously -- and understandably -- more concerned with promoting his solo release. A few weeks later, during the final mix-down of the CD, as he sits down in front of Four Seasons Studio's massive mixing board, he says, "It's nice to be back in the saddle. I've been working too much." He makes a solid distinction between his solo art and the work he does singing for Zhivegas. The music he's making on his own is refined, funky and surprisingly R&B-oriented; it contains snippets of raw funk, slick soul ballads and rough beat-based rock. It sounds both current and retro, and you can hear the effect of all those nights playing funk and disco on his sound; there's not a trace of his hair-metal days on the Frankie Muriel CD.
Muriel may distinguish between his band job and personal work, but he'd be foolish not to harness the Zhivegas perks for the benefit of his solo career. After the Cadillac arrives at Remington's in Springfield at about 5 p.m., five hours before show time, the first order of business for him is to walk over to the mixing board and pop on the Frankie Muriel CD. Immediately the big empty room is filled with the sound of his voice, with guitarist Dee Dee James' solo, and there's enough oomph to convince even a skeptic that this Muriel guy may just have something here. He's standing in front of the empty dance floor on the G-spot of the sound system, listening to the music he created. He looks as if he's in the middle of taping a "behind the scenes" rock-band video: hours before the show, the lead singer, with his long blond locks and street clothes, lost in a little moment.
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