Vernon Reid

HIT OR MYTH Catch Vernon Reid in Artificial Afrika, then see him in Living Colour next week.

Photograph: Bill Bernstein

Think you’re culturally literate and stylistically diverse? Try keeping up with Vernon Reid, longtime lead guitarist for resurgent hard-rock combo Living Colour and a founder of New York’s influential Black Rock Coalition. Phoning in from a hotel room in São Paolo, Brazil, where he has two notebook computers whirring away on the desk, Reid references Ridley Scott and Blade Runner, William Gibson and Neuromancer, the Star Wars planet-city Coruscant and noirish sci-fi cult flick Dark City inside of five minutes, just to convey his impressions of a gray morning in that sprawling city. Reid’s in Brazil as part of an ongoing tour in support of The Chair in the Doorway, Living Colour’s fifth and latest studio album, released on Megaforce this month. The band’s first effort since its 2001 reunion effort, Collideøscope, is subtle, bluesy, futuristic and funky. In other words, it’s a Living Colour record—though certainly a more mature, introspective sibling for the band’s brash 1988 debut, Vivid.

Having already trekked around much of the United States and points well beyond, the members of Living Colour—Reid, vocalist Corey Glover, bassist Doug Wimbish and drummer Will Calhoun—will celebrate their new CD at the Highline Ballroom on October 30. Back in the swing of things, Reid blames Living Colour’s 1995 split on failing to pause for reflection when bassist Muzz Skillings quit in 1992. “Men have a terrible time expressing and dealing with emotions, and we didn’t grieve the loss of our brother,” Reid admits. “We got together with one of the best bassists in the world and also a personal friend, Doug Wimbish. But we should have taken a time-out, and we didn’t.”

As was the case for so many New York bands, September 11, 2001, sparked Living Colour’s return to action with the bleak Collideøscope. The band has toured regularly since, its relationships smoothed by the passage of time. “Obviously we’re older; it was all many dreadlocks ago for me,” Reid says of the difference between then and now. “We’ve come back to embracing each other, which is a wonderful thing.”

New material came slowly, delayed by side projects (Reid’s producing, Glover’s theatrical work) and by all of the band members becoming fathers. More fundamentally, a band that once made a statement just by existing needed to find new bearings. “We are in this curious place where we have an African-American President—what is our mission now?” Reid relates. “In a lot of ways, the subject of The Chair in the Doorway is, how come it took us so long to make a record? It’s based around an aphorism that Corey came up with: We were bickering because we couldn’t agree on the songs and what was going to be the single, and he would say, ‘The problem is that the chair is in the doorway.’”

Even with Living Colour humming along smoothly, Reid still pursues visions of his own. In his latest multimedia solo project, Artificial Afrika, he deals with Western myths of Africa and the diaspora—“everything from the Dark Continent to Aunt Jemima,” he says—with looping guitars, breakbeat rhythms, borrowed video footage and homemade animation inspired by Richard Linklater’s Waking Life. Akim Funk Buddha, a South African spoken-word artist and dancer, and drummer-producer Leon Lamont will also participate in the hour-long string of vignettes. “Parts deal with African mythology,” Reid explains. “Other parts deal with folk myths; some parts just deal with textures—making my own version of electric mud cloth, if you will.”

As for the greater goals he once pursued in the Black Rock Coalition, Reid insists that much work remains to be done. “But when I think that my friend William DuVall is now the lead singer of Alice in Chains, that is staggering. Looking at TV on the Radio and its development—they are our American Radiohead, I’m going to stick my neck out and say that—there’s something wonderful about that. When we were first coming into the mix, there was ‘Little Red Corvette’ and the Bad Brains’ ROIR cassette, and that was it. There’s a lot more to do, a lot further places to go. But when I look at what it is, as opposed to what it was before this conversation was on the table, it really has been huge.”

Vernon Reid presents Artifical Afrika in the Winter Garden at the World Financial Center Sat 24. Living Colour plays the Highline Ballroom Oct 30.

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