Let's face it. Save for the Feelies' performance in the 1986 Melanie Griffith flick Something Wild, High School reunions are perhaps the worst possible place to hear music. You are guaranteed to get smacked with a cheesy DJ who will play the worst dance music from your era, and play psuedo contemporary schlock that your kids would light you on fire for turning on in the car. At best you're looking at a wedding band on their night off - who will play "Last Dance" at the end of the night in order to make the ladies shout in drunken approval and make the (straight) guys wanna puke.
But every rule needs an exception, and last Saturday's 20 year celebration of the first three graduating classes at Miami's Performing Arts High School was that and then some. While the founding pigeons' Theater majors have amongst them: a Tony-award winning actress (who didn't show and thus doesn't get a shout-out ), an Emmy award winning editor (Pepe Servanti) and a blockbuster movie producer (Randall Emmett) with enough juice to get 50 Cent to appear in a hilarious video shot for the occasion -- it was the music and musical theater majors who provided the entertainment - and they brought it hard.
Kicking off with EU's Go-go funk Jam "Doin' Da Butt" -- the last song the DJ played - which is a trick that never fails to work if you're trying to keep the party going with instruments -The band never let go of the one until the plug was pulled.
The lineup included: Platinum selling songwriter David Siegel on bass, Keyboardist/ vocalist Orson Whitfield (The Invisible), Brooklyn-based R&B keysman Ray Angry and drummer Howard Karp, who until a couple years ago, was Emenem's accountant. Karp somehow kept the beat on a sole bongo drum that looked like it had been sawed in half during a bad divorce.
The Emcee duties were filled by Melody Miller, who held out the mic gingerly to Blowfly's drummer as if he was gonna break it and then worked it back and forth to such luminaries as Stephen Marley's singer Simone Gordon and local chantuese Dayami Estevill. Actor-turned-autotrader.com executive Brett Kelly reprised his Michael Jackson impression that he was infamous for in school, which somehow was endearing and fun instead of creepy.
The band then launched into the Stevie Wonder classic "I Wish,"
"Who knows the words?" Whitfield challenged - inspiring Chicago based diva Michelle Hallman to grab the mic and give a volcanic interpretation that would ha ve made Stevie proud. Gordon and Chris Brown, embraced her, hitting the high harmonies and eating all the oxygen in the joint.
After Hallman's bravura performance, the party moved to the front of the stage, where Brown led a rendition of Prince's "Kiss." The set finally wound down when Whitfield couldn't resist singing Billy Joel's "Piano Man"
Usually any Billy Joel song will send me running - but all the good will and good music in the room had me worn down. Gone was the cynical punk rocker turned funkateer persona I had spent 20 years developing -I was just another fighting pigeon, and if Orson had to roll with the Piano Man - then damnit, I was gonna sing along like a Pirate, arm-in-arm with my mates until they kicked us out of the joint.
Which is exactly what I did.
