And the evening offered one direct link with the Apollo’s past - Ike Turner, who played the room during the heyday of the Ike and Tina Turner Revue, returned Sunday to fire off his flamboyant piano solo from “Every Planet We Reach Is Dead.”
On the earthier side, rappers Bootie Brown, De La Soul and Roots Manuva gave voice to the songs’ darker elements. Two choirs joined the crowd on the stage at various points in the show, lifting the energy and infusing the music with a spiritual passion. Even more than their album “Demon Days,” Sunday’s concert drew much of its power from its connection with black American music, particularly hip-hop and gospel. manifestation of the million-selling, Grammy-nominated Gorillaz.
On the surface, it looked like a great cultural divide, but as things turned out, the Harlem theater couldn’t have been a more appropriate venue for this highly anticipated engagement, the only currently scheduled U.S.
There, their eyes met cartoon photos and graphic images illustrating the songs of the Gorillaz, the English band (or non-band) that was an unlikely invader at the famed bastion of jazz, blues and soul music. Sam Cooke, Duke Ellington, Aretha Franklin and other great figures from black music’s past gazed out of vintage photographs across the lobby of the Apollo Theater on Sunday at the placards posted on the opposite wall.
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