Last Saturday night Melbourne was treated to a ridiculously dope triple bill consisting of inimitable music aficionado Quantic (minus his orchestra), the new IT boy soulstar Mayer Hawthorne & his band The County, and the afrolicious one himself, former P-funkateer & the man credited to introducing J. Dilla to the MPC-60 back in 1992, Mr. Amp Fiddler. The Corner Hotel was the setting for this cream of the crop musical assault, one which I thought strange considering that The Corner isn’t known for overly catering to the soul crowd (not a slight against The Corner at all, just an observation). Either way, the venue itself is wonderful and packed full of options: band room to the left, bar to the right, & beer garden upstairs.

DJ Mike Gurreri got things going around 8pm, spinning a mix worthy of the talented luminaries that were in his and our presence, sticking mainly to funky r&b/soul with heavy hip hop beats (most of which I couldn’t I.D.). His set was designed to be a warm-up for Quantic, who is well known for playing much more chill shit than one usually gets at a club (and that which is sorely lacking in our local scene). Shortly after, Quantic (aka Will Holland) jumped onto the decks and rocked the quickly-gathering crowd for the next hour with tunes that reflect two of his most recent releases: Flowering Inferno’s Death Of The Revolution, and Tradition In Transition by Quantic & His Combo Bárbaro. Both of these projects show Quantic heading in a new direction by delving deep into music from the Caribbean, Latin America and Africa and meshing it with his signature soul/funk sound. The music he spun on the night was mostly along these lines, with some brief departures into house here n’ there. As Quantic wound up the first of two 1 hour sets (his role was to DJ in between bands), everyone promptly turned to their right and got on the dance floor, awaiting the very first Australian live performance by Mayer Hawthorne & The County.

Gone are the days where we can cringe at white people trying to be taken seriously when attempting to perform music already perfected (and created) by black musicians. These days (and I guess for the last century, if you wanna broaden the scope of my somewhat vague socio-political statement), talent (and in this case, soul) has no colour. Eminem is successful because he’s talented, previously mentioned Quantic has produced one of the finest catalogues of pure FUNK since the 60s & 70s, & similarly Mayer Hawthorne (real name Andrew Mayer Cohen) has recently caught onto the wave of retro-Motown fever that many artists and musicians are riding, with only a few standouts actually delivering on the promise of the premise. Mayer Hawthorne is one of them. His debut album, A Strange Arrangement, is a short and sweet listen, clocking in at just under 35mins, full of songs that could’ve potentially been hits in an alternative Universe’s Motown. But what makes it whole is that the music has its foot in the past as well as the present, with much of it being infused with some hip hop sensibilities (programmed drums (listen carefully, I know they sound live, but not all of em are) & drum patterns, which is no surprise considering Mayer’s association with hip hop outfit Athletic Mic League).

While Mayer might not be the greatest singer, his falsetto does the job without over-singing or being overly-ironic with the retro angle. The major draw card for seeing Mayer & The County is the fact that the songs are built to be performed live. And indeed, they ran through almost the entire album, performing (from memory) I Wish It Would Rain, Maybe So, Maybe No, One Track Mind, Green Eyed Love and eventually getting to the rather popular debut single, Just Ain’t Gonna Work Out. Prior to the gig I’d read online that he’d performed a heavy metal version of the song recently, so I held out hope for a repeat. Without fail, halfway through performing the original version, Mayer stopped the music, took a swig of a bottle of wine that was floating around between band members on stage, and proceeded to cycle through the possible different versions they could perform. He began by toying with a disco version (which sounded tight), then switched to the heavy metal version (which rocked the fugg out, and was his preference), but he then put it to the crowd and finally settled on a reggae version, which (of course), was the TITS! Mayer ended the song by throwing one of the red heart-shaped vinyl singles for Just Ain’t Gonna Work Out into the crowd. The band then finished off by performing The Ills as an encore. All up, highly impressive, not only from Mayer himself, but The County too.

After another quality hour on the wheels of steel from Quantic, it was time for the fiddler of amplitudes to take over the rest of the night. Stepping out with his iconic afro, sporting a Mayer Hawthorne & The County t-shirt, complete with a keytar strapped over his shoulder, Amp lived up to his name, not only hyping up the crowd (my legs turned into jelly soon after), but also blasting the volume beyond limits. But that’s cool with me, the louder the better. Amp is another one of those cats who doesn’t posses the most amazing singing ability, but exudes such cool when singing that it doesn’t really matter, nor does it detract from the supafly space-funk show him & his band put on.

Admittedly I’m not overly intimate with the majority of Amp’s catalogue, that is I’ve heard all of his stuff, just not enough times for it to sink in. This, however, didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the performance, and wow what an energetic performance it was. When Amp wasn’t serenading on the mic or workin the keys (in both regular and keytar form), his band was providing some extra muscle to take things to the next level. Most notabley his two back-up singers, each of which got a few mins of the solo spotlight to shine and show-off their skills, almost bringing the house down in the process. The drummers from BOTH bands also showed some exceptionally raw skill on the skins, but perhaps a key ingredient missing was a horn or two (it never hurts). It wasn’t until they busted out the Raphael Saadiq produced Faith from 2006’s Afro Strut that I was finally able to sing along while I did my electric slide (I know only 3 moves, that is one of them).

Aside from a minor technical malfunction with Amp’s keys (which is why you ALWAYS bring a backup keytar, it’s the first rule in the book) which caused a bearded middle-aged sound dude to hog the stage from time-to-time, the entire night was incident-free and practically tipping over with good sonic vibrations. It wasn’t just a concert, it was a party. I ended up awkwardly walking out due to my hella jellified legs, feeling like I just had sex with the music for roughly 5 hours (don’t ask me how that works, just roll with it).