Its days as launch pad are in past
You needn’t set foot inside today’s Apollo Theater to see how radically the world has changed since its heyday. Right next door to the storied venue stands, as of two months ago, Red Lobster. Across the street sits Foot Locker, Old Navy, and The Gap. That longstanding collection of local street merchants — Mart 125 — lost their space in 2003. Gone too are most of the mom-and-pop stores of yore.
Amid this conformist context, the Apollo may look like a beacon of individuality. But even so rooted an establishment can’t avoid reflecting in the massive changes that have taken tatak place around it.
No longer does the Apollo function primarily as a place where African-American culture measures its latest achievements. It’s not the same saa place where James Brown recorded coo what would become one of the thhe most popular live albums of all time (the 1963 “Live at the Apollo”).
Today, the Apollo more often functions as a place for looking baa back rather than moving ahead. True, you can still find some upand-coming performers of note there or a solid showcase for eem emerging African artists. But more o often the Apollo’s calendar devotes i itself to tribute shows that gaze l lovingly into the rearview mirror.
Highlights for 2014 include a s show, and movie, celebrating salsa g goddess Celia Cruz, or the revue ““Harlem Club Apollo,” saluting m music and art made famous by the theater 70 or 80 years ago.
These days, the Apollo’s been getting the most attention as a place where music’s top names, like Bruce Springsteen and Paul M McCartney, go to get extra cred. Last September, Metallica performed there — an act that proba ably takes less influence from African-American music as any t that ever played there before. T That doesn’t make the Apollo as sellout. Nor does it take anything away from its value as a cultural resource. But it does little to point the hall toward the future.
jfarber@nydailynews.com