Band Bio
by Greg Kot
originally appeared in the Chicago Tribune, March 10, 2000
Kindred, queasy spirits
The Blacks, a Chicago trio with a penchant for fabulously queasy love songs, know how to make an entrance. Once the statuesque Gina Black took the stage at a local club in a dominatrix get-up. Leashed to her was bandmate Danny Black, dressed as a dog-collared Madison Avenue executive. It was arguably the most elaborate of the Blacks' sartorial pranks, but one that probably won't be soon repeated.
Dog collars aside, the Blacks have the songs to back up the provocative image, as heard on two albums, including the new "Just Like Home" (Bloodshot). The trio, which includes drummer James Emmenegger, puts a dizzy, punk-cabaret spin on traditional blues, country and jazz, a sound that belies Danny Black's earlier tenure in a more conventional rock band.
Django Reinhardt, Louis Armstrong's Hot Seven, a bit of "The Threepenny Opera," and Tom Waits, Black slowly began discovering music that sounded fresher to him than heavy guitar rock and began acquiring instruments to realize the sounds he would incorporate in his next band: trumpet, violin, keyboards, a glockenspiel.
The next year he found a kindred spirit in Gina Black, then a freshman at DePaul University, ostensibly trying to further her studies of classical music and the upright bass. Within a few weeks of meeting Danny Black, she dropped out of school to form a band with him.
Gina Black made the upright bass the center of the Black's sound, with her mixture of plucking, slapping and bowing. When Emmenegger solidified the band after a series of drummers came and went, it was signed to local indie Bloodshot, which specializes in raw, punkish countrya genre that the Blacks don't fit precisely.
Danny Black says. " [label co-owners Rob Miller and Nan Warshaw] understand us. They signed us because he said we take old forms and do something new with them. They've never tried to edit or change us."
With Danny Black moving into the producer's chair, "Just Like Home" presents the band in its full, if more than slightly perverse glory; the tawdry black-and-blue lyrics of erotic and psychic conflict; the eerie vocal effects, which make Gina and Danny occasionally sound like they're transmitting from the bottom of a well; and that moaning, wailing upright bass at the center of the party.
The songsfull of betrayal, jealousy and paranoia, augmented by a stunning, gender-bending reinterpretation of Waits' "Goin' Out West"suggest the blunt-edged honesty of X's music, with Danny and Gina trading off tales in the tradition of John Doe and Exene Cervenka, if not George Jones and Tammy Wynette. I edited my profile with Thomas' Myspace Editor V4.4
BLACKS DOCUMENTARY..PART 1
BLACKS DOCUMENTARY..PART 2
cock a doodledoo guys, actually i dont even havea rooster , just a bunch a hens and acouple geese. how are you? want some chicken pot pie? i just ordered some stock photos of you guys from the bloodshot website, cant wait to frame em and hangem.
TENDED BAR AT VINO'S A COUPLE TIMES YOU CAME THROUGH LITTLE ROCK. THANKS FOR THE GREAT MUSIC AND MEMORIES. ANY CHANCE OF FINDING A BLACK FAMILY CD? KEEP IT UP. YOU GUYS ARE TO DATE MY FAVORITE LIVE PERFORMANCE.
Aaron Ross, ShapeShifter Lee Bob Watson, Aficianado Mariee Sioux, Faces in the Rocks
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