Almost a year from their first-ever performance at Tuscaloosa’s Hip Hop Summit 2009, the musical group Kadesh and the Perfect Strangers is teaming up with hip hop artist a2z to form The Alphabet Detectives, a multi-genre group dedicated to stamping out musical crime.
“We’re a sort of Justice League for music, a detective agency created for the enforcement of musical quality,” said Andrew Cotten, also known as a2z.
“Kadesh and I are the agents; the Perfect Strangers are the muscle. We’re at our workplace when we’re on stage because that’s when we solve our cases.”
By incorporating this superhero storyline throughout the show, which will be held at the Mellow Mushroom at 10 p.m. on Saturday night, The Alphabet Detectives hope to entertain audience members not just through music but also through theatrics and the show itself.
“Tuscaloosa hasn’t seen anything like this before, or if it has, it’s been a long time,” said band-member Ryan Davis, also known as Kadesh.
The supergroup’s creativity does not stop with theatrics, however. Everything from rock-and-roll and alternative to hip-hop, R&B, and jazz will be showcased during the show, and every song is original. For The Alphabet Detectives, “covers” are virtually non-existent.
Nor will they be performing in 30-minute blocks of typical multi-group shows. Instead, they will perform separately for no longer than two-song mini-sets, then “feed [their] songs in and out of each other to make something completely fluid,” Davis said.
In addition to what each group “does best,” the supergroup will also perform five to six collaborative songs, in which they create something completely different than the songs either group does individually.
“It’s going to be three hours of non-stop music that’s good and not genre specific,” said bassist Adrian Marmolejo. “It’s one of those shows where you’ll really want to stay from beginning to end, and anybody who’s going to be in town would be sad to miss it.”
The group has even recorded its own theme song, which can be downloaded from divShare.com. In it, they explain that The Alphabet Detectives are the “only agency for the job” when it comes to stamping out the “abuse of melody, extortion of terminology, misuse of rhythm, unauthorized reproduction of others’ originality, a.k.a. swagger jacking, lack of passion, and all-out laziness.”
“The show could really generate discussion about the artistic nature of hip-hop and rock, which is what we want,” Davis said.
First by creating original music and artistic shows themselves, The Alphabet Detectives hope to inspire others to do the same.
“We’d like to start a new movement that brings artistry and theatrical elements back into live shows,” Cotten said. “It’s not something that a lot of musical acts do anymore.”
The group plans on doing these shows again, developing the storyline further each time. If it’s great now, said Cotten, imagine what it can become 12 shows from now.
“Plus,” he said, “A lot of the musical acts in Tuscaloosa are brought in from the outside. To be able to have these two acts, two of the best original acts actually from Tuscaloosa performing together, is great.”
The cost of the show will be $5.
