The Milwaukee based band returns to ARCC during Stress Relief Week

By Jordan Rowan

Staff Writer

When the Charles Walker Band played at ARCC last year, I described their show as being full of “generic funk music.” On the morning of December 7, 2016, the band came back to play more of the same.

It’s Stress Relief Week here at ARCC and finals are fast-approaching. Music is a great way to relieve stress as seen by the many students with headphones in their ears as Walker’s band played on the Student Center stage.

The show had few highlights. When Walker picked up his saxophone to play spiraling solos, the show almost gained some life but even those moments overstayed their welcome. What surrounded the many sax solos were uninspired originals and dumbed down covers of classics such as James Brown’s “(Get Up I Feel Like Being A) Sex Machine” and George Clinton’s “We Want the Funk”, a song only done justice when played by Clinton himself. These songs are meant to be danced to. On this day, they were diluted to something lifeless and stiff.

The band has been reduced to a four-piece band with Walker and Porsche being front and center. The drums stay tight throughout the set but are played too aggressively and at times they drown out everything except for Walker’s high-leveled mic. The bass lines switch between plain and inaudible.

During a rendition of “Get Up Offa That Thing”, their second James Brown cover, Walker urges students to get up and “try to release that pressure.” They do not oblige. The song is split in half by yet another excessive sax solo. When he returns to the keys he shouts “I’m back!” No one in the crowd looked pleased or relieved of stress.