CECILIA LOW
They Say She's Different
The Space. Adelaide Festival Centre. June 19-20 2014
Reviewed by Peter Wilkins
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| Cecilia Low in They Say She's Different |
Cecilia Low sure is one helluva
wild one. Her channeling of 70’s funk rock fusion queen, Betty Davis is high
octane power fuelled by Low in the role of Davis and her fantastic band and
vocal backing singer who take on the roles of contemporaries like Jimi Hendrix,
Devon Wilson and partner Miles Davis. On stage and film, They Say She’s Different takes us back to the explosive era of sex,
drugs and rock and roll. The world was changing through the liberated Sixties
when Davis was emerging on the scene with her unique brand of soul and forging
a new music of raw, edgy, electric-wired soul. Musical director Tony Kopa winds
up the audience, Oh yeah!!~, while the ear-splitting, chest rasping and mind
blowing chords of the electric guitars rip and tear through the Festival
Centre’s Space Theatre.
Low takes the stage with the
inner power jet force of defiant attitude. In her tight black leather shorts,
knee-length black leather boots and pink puffed furry jacket, which she later
discards for a slink black slip she is Betty Davis. Her body slides with erotic
obsession and her voice purrs, growls and roars from a throat born to scream
her independence to the world through her bluesy, funky music. Apart from the
lyrics, projected upon the screen with re-enactments of Betty’s life, the
lyrics of her bluesy funk become an ear-splitting sea of sounds. It is
unfortunate that Davis’s lyrics should be lost to those less familiar with her
songs. The show swells to the Space as though it were in a stadium, and while I
am swept away by the sheer power of Davis’s music and story, I give way
willingly to the bombardment of attitude.
They Say She’s Different traces Davis’s journey from the mid
Sixties when she met the Chamber Brothers at the Electric Circus night club and
presented her song Uptown in Harlem
to them. “She just wouldn’t shut up”. It’s 1966 and the age is ready for
Davis’s unique fusion of blues and soul. Throughout the one hour show, Low
intersperses Davis’s classic songs, such as Your
man, My Man, Your Mamma Wants You
Back, and songs from her Anti Love compilation with accounts of
the people in her life, such as close friend, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Reed, Muddy
waters, B.B. King, Mohammed Ali and her partner Miles Davis, whom she introduced to Hendrix and revived his flagging
career.
The pain, anguish and struggle of
her life and the troubled, turbulent lives of her contemporaries are captured
in atmospheric black and white on the screen behind the band. Here is the harsh
truth of life in the heady world of her contemporaries. “it was not all
glamour” Davis tells us. “It was hard work. It was emotional pain until you
don’t know who you are.” The show is a lament for lost lives, dreams and
fractured relationships. Betty Davis, the girl from North Carolina, who would
never apologize, and paved the way for Prince, Madonna and the musicians of
funk fusion, also gave the world the power to be yourself, stand tall and bear
to be different.
In a show that is loud, brash,
raw and powered with jet-force attitude, Low’s Davis is mesmerizing, seductive
and unapologetic. Kopa’s incitement to bring the audience to their feet needed
little urging. They were the possessed, transported back in time to an era when
freedom moved the spirit and Betty Davis showed the way.