Checking out "Fela!" at Soundcheck

WNYC's Soundcheck program hosted an intimate in-studio performance today at The Greene Space, featuring the musical duo Dean & Britta and cast members of Broadway's Fela!

Dean Wareham (guitar, vocals) and Britta Phillips (keyboards, vocals) will launch a limited-edition deluxe double CD next Tuesday—13 Most Beautiful...Songs for Andy Warhol's Screen Tests.

“It's kind of like making a music video but backwards,” said Wareham of their intriguing commission to score Warhol's simply shot, slowed-down portraits of Factory studio pals like Nico, Jane Holzer and Mary Woronov. The duo opened with “I'll Keep It With Mine,” the Dylan song Nico recorded on Chelsea Girl. They followed with the darkly dreamy, twangy “I Found It Not So”--written for a film of Woronov but mistakenly accompanying a film of Holzer thoroughly, endlessly brushing her pearly whites. I had to agree with Soundcheck host John Schaefer: Mistake or not, the song and the film fit!

Look for Wareham and band, including Phillips, performing Galaxie 500 songs at the Bowery Ballroom, August 19. Complete show information

Soundcheck audio and more information on Dean & Britta

You haven't seen Bill T. Jones's Fela! in any of its incarnations? I don't even want to talk to you. But the irresistible samples Schaefer offered this afternoon--with Fela! star Sahr Ngaujah, other company members and the magnificent musicians from Antibalas rocking the show's versions of "Everything Scatter," "Upside Down" and especially "Water Get No Enemy"--should get more folks there. The little Greene Space was packed with people arranged in orderly rows, but it was hard to stay seated.

Recently, Femi Kuti--son of the late Afrobeat king Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, and a renowned singer-bandleader in his own right--visited the Broadway show for the first time. He was moved to tears. Ngaujah told us, "Femi said that [his father] would have been quite amused by what we're doing--in the best way!"

Soundcheck audio and more information on Fela!

Fela! on Broadway website

The Greene Space information and schedule