VERNON REID TALKS MUSIC
The Living Color leader and guitar God in a wide ranging conversation
For my ‘Finding the Funk’ documentary (which you can rent or buy in Amazon), I interviewed a slew of musicians and thinkers. But few had the musical range and ability to articulate their thoughts more profoundly than Vernon Reid. Though he’s best known for his playing with the rock band Living Color, this Brooklyn native has shined in a wide variety of musical context, from Ronald Shannon Jackson’s Decoding Society to Public Enemy to Miles Electric with Marcus Miller to Greg Tate’s Burnt Sugar Arkestra. Back when the Village Voice was a great place to read music criticism Vernon was one of the few musicians who could contribute and put all of us “professional” critics to shame. If you’re gonna watch these videos you’ll get the most out of them by watching in the order they’re posted as the conversation with Vernon starts with funk and then drifts into a wide ranging survey of popular music from a variety of angles, from the street corner to the spiritual.