Concert Review: Maxwell at The Verizon Center, Washington DC
(Oct. 2 w/ Common & Chrisette Michele)
2009-10-07
EbonyJet.com Staff

Aside from writing songs, what Maxwell has apparently been doing for the last eight years is studying. Studying great performances to be exact and obviously deciding that he was ready to rise to major stardom and not just be relegated to the heartthrob set. You can always tell how confident a performer is by the background music he chooses to play before he appears. With Fela, James Brown and the Junkyard Band as a warm-up, Maxwell exuded confidence, and of course - sex appeal.

Until now, who would have thought that Maxwell could have sold out a venue as large as Washington DC’s Verizon Center, just down the road from where the singer gave his very first concert at Howard University in the dingy and cramped Cramton Auditorium. If the audience was any judge, he could have sold out a week of shows.

In a reception held earlier on the day of his performance, the actor Jeffrey Wright said of Maxwell that he was uniquely able to take the best of what works for other artists and reinterpret that into his own modern style. That ability was evident in the performance itself, which has the staging and orchestration of a Sade show, the visuals of a Seal concert, the moves of Marvin Gaye and at times Jackie Wilson and the on-stage banter of Barry White with a little R Kelly thrown in for good measure. And yet, the mix was all Maxwell’s to own.

But for a couple of lines of banter that tanked (“Baby, I want to take you home and chop you up like vegetables.”), the show went off seamlessly. The singer’s “Y” shaped stage extended far into the audience on either side, allowing several lucky women to grab a leg, a foot, or a sleeve when Maxwell launched into Motown style splits.

A measure of the talent of any sex symbol male vocalist is whether he can win over the men in the crowd. Maxwell seemed to recognize that act and helped get the men on board by suggesting that he was warming their dates up so they could get lucky later. Looking at the couples leaving the concert, it seems he was right on that point.

Common & Chrisette Michele

In the old days, the transition between acts in a major concert might have taken nearly an hour so each performer could have the benefit of his or her own staging. In an area of short attentions spans, it’s now standard for only the featured act to have a full stage set-up and opening acts to be relegated to a small part of that bigger stage. Maxwell’s opening acts handled the situation very differently. Common found that smallness limiting while Chrisette Michele found it too big.

It’s never easy to woo a crown hellbent on scoring food and liquor while waiting for you to get on with it and get to the good stuff. Chrisette Michele’s tight band and clear vocals served her well, but her still small repertoire and lack of string stage presence did not. In a small club it all would have worked, but for a huge arena she’ll need a bit more seasoning.

Common on the other hand, in an exuberant and satisfying turn, was confined by the lack of space he had to work the stage, his compelling physical presence and energy both too much to be held back. You could almost see him wanting to jump the imaginary lines onto Maxwell’s set and seize the audience.

Undeterred, Common, aong with singer Bilal and a DJ-aided live band, worked much harder than necessary to get a stiff audience off their feet and dancing in the aisles. Doing a set mixed with his own hits and a tour of classic hip hop, he moved deftly between classic lyrics and his own added freestyle.

Clearly the acting he’s done in Hollywood has focused his attention on detail and loosened his inhibitions. Not simply content to pump his fist and tell the crowd to scream like too many rap artists, Common hyped it up another notch with pop-locking and break-dancing and left the crowd wanting much more – at least until Maxwell got on stage.