Groove

In Promo by Vigour

I’m not sure if you’ve ever tried explaining human emotion to a fucking alien but it’s not that simple.

I’d been told that humans were led by their emotions and doubted that it could be as obvious as that, but it’s true. Shit, I like to have me a good time – you could call that an emotion if you like – but there is something so… sad… about how much humans depend on emotion over logic and fact.

This explains their reliance on red top newspapers who sell fake stories that make people mad and angry. That’s how they fucking cry when they see a baby goat or some shit at the zoo. Goat’s aren’t even that cute anyway, come on.

All of that is bullshit, no doubt, but the one thing I absolutely get their reliance on emotion for is music. There is nothing quite like earth music. There is so much of it, and all of it is so different. If you’re angry you can listen to heavy metal. If you’re serene but on some Mozart. Fucking A. But the music that seems to be tied most to emotion is funk and soul.

Funk music is less about the notes being played and more about the groove – the general vibe – how they’re played. And that’s unique to me because that makes it more interesting to see live and in person. The first time I saw it live I understood human emotion for the first time.

The problem with a genre like funk, that relies on that groove, is it’s so fucking easy to skip the groove. The notes don’t work any more, or the timing is off. The bassist fumbles a line or the drummer misses a fill, and it sounds like the worst thing you’ve ever heard. The lines are so finely balanced. One bum note is the difference between genius and disaster.

Wiz crossed that line recently. He was a funk classic, grooving along to the sound of the Jet Set Radio, all the notes falling perfectly in sync with everything around him. You could tell he was in a place that he enjoyed being, with people he cared about. But then we all heard that one note that struck a discord. That was the moment he drank that fucking concoction from Viper Roberts. And ever since then the music stopped grooving. The fucking vibes disappeared. He’s a fucking aural disaster.

Now Wiz is less like that amazing band that gave me an epiphany and more like one of those soulless wedding covers bands that people kind of nod their head to out of politeness but would never buy a ticket to see. Wiz is a fucking sellout. A washed up has-been. All because he missed that one fucking note that one time.

It’s lucky that Vigour is here with enough swag to fill a solar system, and enough groove to fill a galaxy, right?

And boy do I plan to make a sweet, sweet symphony at FTW. So let’s do it now and do it loud!