As students socialize in booths at the Frist Cafe, Emergency Funk Squad casually sets up for its gig. This is not quite an emergency, but the funk is definitely in the house.
Three band members joke while two others work on the equipment for the evening's performance. Michael Gibney '01, the lead singer, pauses briefly to laugh at a joke made by his three friends before turning back to the microphone he is hooking up to an amplifier.
At first glance, Gibney resembles just another college band member. His clothes look left over from the grunge era. His shoulders are bent in a perpetual slouch, and his glance gives the impression that he doesn't care. And then he steps on stage and begins to sing.
Some describe his voice as resembling that of James Brown. It certainly is fantastic, especially the range: he can sing high notes with beautiful clarity. The rich sound of the brass instruments adds to this effect.
The Emergency Funk Squad plays original music that is a combination of funk and soul.
According to drummer Nim Ben-Reuven, the band finds its roots in soul greats including Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding and Al Green. By this definition, Gibney's voice suits the band's style startlingly well.
"I think nowadays funk has got this implication that you're going to be Spin Doctors or Blues Traveler," Ben-Reuven said. "Like, prep-school bands are funk bands. We just do a lot of soul covers."
Many the band members come from jazz backgrounds, and their music also has some jazz influences.
The Emergency Funk Squad is comprised of students from several area colleges.
The Princeton members include Ben Holmes '01 (trumpet), Rob Liguori '01 (tenor sax), Michael Hodgson '04 (bass) and Audrey Wright '01 (alto sax).
Joseph Nord (trombone) is a freshman at Columbia University, Phil Santiago (piano) is in his first year at Harvard University and Jesse Fischer (guitar) and Ben-Reuven are both students at Rutgers University.
All the band members grew up in the Princeton area and started playing together in 1994 while still in high school.
"We were in detention a lot together," Ben-Reuven said. "We were tired of the indie rock sound so we just slowly got together and picked up people on the way."
The band's former name was Mr. McJive & the Hi-Fives. Gibney and Holmes were in a rock band called Speckled Media.
"We kicked the lead-singer out, and got Michael's brother to play drums," Holmes said.
The band members describe their lyrics as typical of the soul genre, following a "boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl recipe."
"The fact that the music is original is far more interesting than the lyrics in my opinion," Fischer said. "It's innovative."
Holmes, protesting jokingly, disagrees with Fischer, quoting the lyrics:
"The other night, I got f_ked up, the police came over and I got locked up," he shouts to the laughter of the other band members. "I mean, that's sheer poetic genius."
Accompanying the band to its various performances are a rubber chicken — it was draped artistically across the stage at the Frist Cafe — and a can of beans of unidentified variety.
"The beans used to be used to hold up the drum set, but now they've kind of become a motivational tool," Fischer said. "It's a conceptual thing really."
The band also appears occasionally in costume. At Halloween, Holmes wore a gas mask while playing the trumpet during a performance at the Murray-Dodge Cafe.
"I couldn't really play, I actually had to take the mask apart, and stick my trumpet into the open breathing hole," he explained. "Then I started to sweat and I had to take it off."
The band sits around a table in Frist Café, chatting and laughing while waiting for their gig to start. Magnetic and funny, the members are in tune with one another, even when they're not playing. Despite the relaxed attitude, it is clear they work hard. The band members admit that they have kicked members out of the band for poor performance.
"Despite all of the joking around we've done, we're pretty serious," Fischer said. "We do a lot of rehearsing. We're pretty tight."
"We do all of the arrangements," Ben-Reuven added. "We do original songs. We make it our own."
"And most important of all," Holmes cut in, "We can all read music. You don't understand how many bands there are who can't."
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