I Want!
Helado Negro sexes the symbol at The Sinclair on Friday, 26 April 2024.
Marem Ladson strums the acoustic in the opening slot.
The balconyIs the balcony open? Some venues, like The Sinclair, you can tell at a glance how well the show sold by seeing if the balcony is open for seating (or standing, whatever) or not.
Maybe that’s obvious at one level: if the show didn’t sell enough tickets, then there aren’t going to be enough bodies at the gig to need the extra space in the balcony. You can squeeze everyone in the ground floor orchestra just fine.
But why close the balcony at all, instead of just letting people roam around as they please? Maybe that’s less obvious. It boils down to legal liability at the end of the day, like a lot of operating decisions do at venues these days.
If you open the balcony, you need to staff the balcony. Even if there’s no bar up there to staff, you still need employees keeping half-a-babysitting eye on folks. Wherever there is liquor, strange lights, and music, people do weird things. And you don’t want them doing weird things that hurt themselves or hurt others.
So venues just shut down the balcony. Less staff to pay for a show that probably didn’t sell as many tickets as you hoped. That’s that.
Marem Ladson
The Spain-NYC solo strummer Marem Ladson took the stage with a sweet acoustic guitar on her hip. No finger picking here, though, regardless of what phantom memories you entertain about the Spanish guitar method. It was all downward thumb strum, accompanied by a feathery indie pop voice that sounded like American English when she wanted it to sound American, and Spanish when she wanted it to sound Spanish. Extra points for a touch of distinción. She lays claim to mainlands on either side of the Atlantic, though her latest EP Baby Light was mixed and mastered in England. Neither/nor, naturally.
Did not know this guy was such a sex symbol! Say hello to the frontman for Helado Negro, a multimedia artist, musician, and Ecuadorian-American Roberto Carlos Lange. You don’t get that vibe at indie pop shows as much, which are fueled by cool more than sexual magnetism.
Helado Negro
So many “Te quiero”s! Even a few “Yo quiero”s. Woof!
Maybe you could write some words here about the enhanced freedom and liberty that white audiences feel transubstantifying artists of color into sex objects. But true or not, it’s an old notion that’s probably been written up superbly elsewhere already, and 10,000x over. So consider this paragraph just another footnote to that extensive literature.
The three-piece band melded straight ahead electro indie pop with Latin rhythms here and there. Songs from the new LP PHASOR led off the set, before Lange led the loving crowd down a breadcrumb trail of old favorites that at least 15% of the room knew by heart, and 50% knew by reputation. Pretty good percentages in a low-attention span era.
And, yes, the balcony was open.
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