One For the Road: Marvin Tate

By Chuck Sudo in Arts & Entertainment on Oct 20, 2010 10:00PM

Marvin Tate and yours truly go way back to his days fronting D-Settlement, one of the most anarchic blends of funk, rock, soul, jazz and improvised music this city has ever produced. Think P-Funk on a lower scale and you have a sense of what they were all about. D-Settlement evolved from the ashes of Uptighty, a dance band collective led by guitarist Leroy Back that also featured Lula Café's Amalea Tshilds on vocals

D-Settlement became one for the "Where are they now?" file, the individual members each going their separate ways. Tate went on to form the band Baby Alright, which reins in a lot of the zaniness that made D-Settlement's gigs memorable. Tate is also an artist (his snowglobes are some of the most morbid looking pieces of work I've ever seen) and a poet of pretty notable renown. Here's a video of Tate performing on Def Poetry Jam, date unknown.

Warning: there's some language some might find objectionable here. Play at full volume at your risk,.