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| The
Big Voice
Audra
McDonald sang for a crowd of devoted musical theater
fans at Proctor’s Theatre in Schenectady Nov. 12.
It may have been raining and just shy of miserable outside,
but the multiple Tony Award-winner kept the audience
happy with an array of show tunes.
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Gifted
By
John Brodeur
Blackalicious, Earl Greyhound
Skidmore
College, Nov. 11
What happens when you set a college student-activities board
loose with a date to fill and a budget with which to fill
it? In the case of last Saturday’s show at Skidmore’s Sports
and Recreation Center, you get two wholly different but satisfying
acts with little connection to one another beside some of
the performers’ skin tone, and the name at the bottom of their
fee checks.
Not that this mattered to the kids. Actually, both Blackalicious
and openers Earl Greyhound (ha ha) did appeal to a certain
segment: Between sets, a curly-haired kid ran by me in the
parking lot, gasping for breath, asking of—well, I’m not sure
who exactly—“Do you know how long it takes to roll a joint?”
(Perhaps this was the same kid whose dimebag I later spotted
discarded on the rec center’s stairs.)
And it appeared that Blackalicious knew their audience. On
the classic Nia track “Deception,” MC Gift of Gab led
the audience through the song’s “la dee da” chorus, then altered
the line “Be true to yourself and stay humble” to become “.
. . smoke one bowl.” On that same song, he raps “If you’re
blessed with the talent, utilize it to the fullest”—and that
he did.
The
duo’s (Gift of Gab, along with DJ Chief Xcel) 2005 release
The Craft made a strong case for the viability of modern
hip-hop, the very antidote for a case of G-Unit. It reasserted
the duo’s rhythmic and lyrical creativity, while eschewing
the sample-heavy track structure of old. Some took this as
overstatement—much of the album does get bogged-down in statement
of purpose, an odd move for an act well into its second decade—but
more often than not, the tracks spoke for themselves.
Live, Craft tracks were deftly filed between tracks
from the duo’s catalog, and many of their “conscious” tracks
were sidelined in favor of party favorites. Smart, as their
presentation is as simple as live hip-hop gets: one MC and
one DJ. No dancers. No fancy lightshow or backdrop. No live
instrumentation. No guest singers. This leaves the onus on
the tracks, which Xcel chooses with care—what other hip-hip
act is sampling Harry Nilsson?—and Gab’s vocal skills, which
are, in a word, outstanding. A master of the run-on sentence,
he has a thesaurus-like lyrical bank and seemingly bottomless
lung capacity.
That’s not to mention his crowd-control abilities. He managed
to change up one of live music’s most rote routines—the “which
side can be louder?” act—getting half the audience at a time
to shout “Party’s over here, fuck you over there!” And a power
outage during “Rhythm Sticks” didn’t faze the duo—while some
acts would have freaked and left the stage, Gab and Xcel stayed
put as the crowd chanted “bullshit”; the moment the lights
kicked back on, Gab invested himself in an impressive, mile-a-minute
freestyle session while Xcel found his cue. A master of the
craft at work.
New
York-based trio Earl Greyhound started off the evening with
a 40-minute set of songs from their Some Records debut Soft
Targets. Unfortunately, it sounded like the sound engineer
was testing the mix right on through the set—by the end, you
could hear the guitar, bass, and kick drum! But no
matter—guitarist Matt Whyte pens some deliciously monstrous
retro-rock nuggets, low-end be damned. The group at times
resembled the Capital Region’s own Super 400, which is a high
(or, high) compliment; and their cool, classic sound
was as big as bassist Kamara Thomas’ afro. They were at their
best on the eight-minute “Monkey,” on which drummer Ricc Sheridan
threatened to pummel his Ludwigs into the front two rows.
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Classifieds
