Venue: Hotel Jama, Postojna
Concert date: 06.05.2009
Attendance: 250
Ticket price: 14 €
Under the pressure of the recession, the finale of the 5th season of the Postojna Blues festival moved itself, on its own initiative, to early May this year. We’d already gotten used to the annoying juggling of the lineup, which the festival’s programming team couldn’t dodge all season, and we ended up without even the signature trademark of the Postojna scene, the traditional big finale. So last Thursday, at Hotel Jama in Postojna, the band-aid for the wounds of Postojna’s loyal regulars arrived in the form of the American queen of vocal blues and soul, a full-figured auntie by the name of E. C Scott. E. C. Scott is one hell of a woman, a big-bottomed Black mama with a venomous vocal register, charm and charisma, and the depraved nature of an unrepentant sex maniac. Her ample frame is really the only credible equivalent of her character, which brought the Postojna crowd to heel without any resistance worth mentioning.
The last night of this year’s blues season carried the heavy anticipation of a one-of-a-kind concert experience in the air, surely thanks in part to the bitter aftertaste that had been coating our mouths ever since the last visit to Postojna. Luckily, Zyeco stepped aside this time for music with a steel character, a spicy minestrone of blues, soul and at moments even heavy rock, wrapped in the protection of first-rate vocal interpretation. The expectations were justified, because E. C. Scott spent the whole night diligently plucking the strings of unfulfilled dreams, especially the sexually flavored ones, the kind where your average Joe can’t hide his suddenly blushing cheeks and can only shrug helplessly. Thursday night was full of such moments. E. C., for instance, by busily plopping down in the laps of the chosen ones who, by some unwritten rule, capped off each of her laid-back strolls through the audience, shamelessly tested the flexibility of the crotch-located standing capital of white-faced Slovenes.
So E. C. demanded a heaping helping of attention for herself even when she wasn’t wowing us with the otherworldly softness of her vocal delivery, and that she finally got it hardly needs saying! Showman moves like these are always welcome, especially for widening the receptivity of the Slovenian community, otherwise unused to such intense use of expressive devices with an “excessive” sexual sign. Still, with all the “circus”, you can’t overlook E. C. Scott’s primal asset, the singer’s voice. Her debt to the legends of soul music is obvious, as is the presence of traditional approaches with which she gave meaning to more or less familiar blues and soul standards. Leaning on the musical values of the past, E. C. Scott built us a proving ground for vocal acrobatics of the highest quality, with no shortage of first-rate arranged covers or a breathtaking arsenal of original ideas. In the budding palette of characters hidden in the liveliness of the singer’s voice, sensuality remains the central guiding thread of the E. C. Scott ritual. The soft, instantly contagious tone of her voice drew the guidelines for the evergreen classics Stand By Me and Let The Good Times Roll, while with the roughly edged This Ain’t Your Daddy’s Blues and Other Side Of Me, E. C. staged a real musical monodrama of hard-hearted blues. Money squeezed some grittier blues-rock vibes out of the singer, which E. C. effortlessly channeled into the sturdy spinning of the hard-hitting rhythm machine. The absolute surprise of the night, though, was the merciless funky reincarnation of Gabriel’s Sledgehammer, which under the baton of E. C. Scott’s chubby little hand ended up levitating into one of the undisputed favorites of the night.
In the style of a top-tier performer, and with the conviction of an enraged rhinoceros, E. C. Scott spent two hours of shameless “chatting” with the Postojna crowd scattering a heaping helping of musical highlights, clearly drawing a thick line between herself and today’s instantly served knockoffs of self-proclaimed queens of vocal music. These days, such revivals of musical highs from long-gone days often sound dated and clunky, since they usually come with a shrinking of room to maneuver that forbids the performer, while reinventing the wheel, any departure from the standards of vocal blues and soul. Even so, we Slovenian lovers of good music couldn’t have wished for a nicer end to the blues season.
Photos: Mojca Perdih
Setlist
1. Living For The Weekend 2. If You Don’t Love Me Baby 3. Let The Good Times Roll 4. Queen Size Bed 5. If I Can Borrow 6. Sweet Man Of Mine 7. To Good To Keep To Myself 8. Just One Of Those Days 9. This Ain’t Your Daddy’s Blues 10. Money 11. Other Side Of Me 12. Sledgehammer 13. Stand By Me 14. What a Good Felling 15. Tell Me About It
Photo gallery
