click to enlargeThe Posse - CLIFF LIPSON/PHOTO COURTESY OF CBS
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Cliff Lipson/Photo courtesy of CBS
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The Posse
It's 4:30 in the afternoon at Sunset and Bronson Studios in Hollywood, and a packed audience grooving to Daft Punk's "Get Lucky." This isn't a Daft Punk performance however, and really it's not a concert at all. It's a Monday afternoon taping of the
Arsenio Hall Show. (And yes, the audience still does the "whoo whoo whoo" dog pound chant arm thing when Hall takes the stage.)
The song is being performed by The Posse, Hall's house band. This five person group is helmed by Robin DiMaggio, a drummer and L.A. music industry veteran of an early '90s L.A. band called Sexual Chocolate and the White Cream. (He was the only Caucasian member of the group, and thus the white cream.)
The Posse also includes bassist Alex Al, also a former member of Sexual Chocolate and the White Cream. They played clubs where Prince would play, and Vanilla Ice would come sit in with them, DiMaggio says. Arsenio was a fan and friend. (In fact, he and Eddie Murphy borrowed the band's name and used it in their 1988 film
Coming to America). When Hall came back to late night TV last September, he asked DiMaggio to put the band back together.
While everyone's always talking about The Roots and their Jimmy Fallon gig (though, screw all of them for taking
The Tonight Show back to New York), late night talk show band isn't the most glamorous gig in the world. Sure, there are lights, cameras and the occasional movie star, but it's a very technical job that requires The Posse to constantly be on their toes. DiMaggio says the group has 90 songs in their back pocket. They get 30 minutes a day to rehearse the almost 20 cues the show requires.
Tonight the group's main task is to warm up the audience and to provide the intro music for the guests, which today are
The Butler director Lee Daniels and actress Naomie Harris. DiMaggio bases each day's song selection on the vibe he gets from the audience and the tone he wants to set for each guest —a Somalian actor gets east African music, a gaggle of reality TV stars doing a pole dancing demonstration gets "hardcore R&B."
click to enlargeRobin DiMaggio - CLIFF LIPSON/PHOTO COURTESY OF CBS
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Cliff Lipson/Photo courtesy of CBS
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Robin DiMaggio
When Hall cuts to a commercial, the group goes zero to 60 on a funked-out version of Drake's "Just Hold On, We're Going Home", which gets women in the audience on their feet and dancing. The group later plays "Return of the Mac" (which inspires an audience singalong) and then Prince's "Irresistible Bitch." While TV viewers only hear a few seconds of these segue songs, the band plays on during the break, giving the audience a mini-concert while everyone at home watches commercials. The group looks like they're having a good time.
In a way, they're a cover band, but what Rickey Minor at Jay Leno's show, Paul Schaffer at
Letterman, and, yes, The Roots, reveal, is that the job requires both top notch musicianship and the ability to play almost anything at the drop of a hat.