"Federal Hill's only live music venue" is not quite the most dramatic motto for your rock club, but it definitely makes sense. It's modest. I like it. It's also the banner under which the Funk Box, a newly renovated and re-made version of the 8x10 Club, masquerades its shows.
The 8x10 was opened in 1983, and until last year it was the only place in Baltimore to hear funk, soul, and the jammy stuff. To some, that meant "the best music joint in Baltimore", but to others it was just an O.K. place to dance.
But when I went to the Funk Box on Tuesday night to see Maceo Parker play with his band, what I was most excited about was the spring-loaded dance floor that the Funk Box is mentioning every chance it gets on its flyers. Actually, I might have been a bit more excited about the Tuesday dinner special ($1 crabs, $5 pitchers) at Ryleigh's seafood restaurant next door, but let it suffice to say that the dance floor sounded pretty sweet. Well, the floor wasn't quite the moonwalk I expected (it was more like a gymnastics floor--you can feel the person stompin' and prancin' next to you, but that's about it) but the show was unbelievable.
Imagine this: Maceo Parker, the man who got his first job in James Brown's band when he was 19 and later went on to play with P-Funk and Bootsy's Rubber Band, steps on stage with his horn section, all three of them in pressed business suits. And that's just what they're there for--bidness. Funk to these guys is no mere pastime. It's an obsession. It's a job. It's something that makes you yell, "Good God!"
The rest of the night proceeded according to this fashion. Men in pinstripes and bowties shook, rattled, rolled, hollered and blew some horns like you never heard to the beat of the funky drummer.
By the end of all, at least one thing was clear to me: shows like the one I had just seen are the very cream of live music. It's soul music. Real music. Music that is so hard to resist that your feet dance themselves until your legs hurt, and there's nothing you can do about it.
And that, my friends, is why the Funk Box is something everyone at the Johnny Hop should check out and take very seriously.
Where else can we see Chuck Berry? Bo Diddley? Maceo Parker? Sure, there are a lot of wankers that come through as well...people like the Jazz Mandolin Project and the Addison Groove Project (lots of jam band "projects"), but the idea of a soul club, of Baltimore's latter-day answer to the Apollo, is an idea to be treasured.
