De La Soul

I have my reservations about writing this review. Where do I begin, seeing as those who did not attend the show would be reading this to find out just what they missed? I for one did attend the De La Soul show at The Espy but, regretfully, cannot fully elaborate on what the night entailed. For starters, unless I was six foot two or within reaching distance of the stage, I was unable to see the boys in all their glory, let alone their ten-piece touring band, The Rhythm Roots All-Stars. I cannot even tell you how many were on stage at any one point in time throughout the evening. The first time I had the pleasure of seeing De La Soul live was sitting atop a hill at a festival on New Years Day last year, and I saw a hell of a lot more from there, I’ll say!

The room was packed to sardine-like capacity, and I found myself claustrophobically maneuvering my way through the throng of sweaty bodies, losing my friend and also my bag in the process. When I dropped my bag in the masses, I contemplated giving up searching for it on the floor. It was as if I were doing so in the middle of the mosh pit at a Rage Against The Machine gig, and I valued my life more so than the bag. Eventually bag was found - though I was trodden on several times in the process – and so was friend. After sweet-talking the security, my friend and I found ourselves a little nook on the stairs upon which we could perch. However, the speakers directly in our line of view prevented us from seeing much else other than Posdnuos, Trugoy and DJ Maseo on stage. But this would have to do for now.

Tonight was the second show in as many nights at the venue for their celebratory 20th anniversary tour, and promised to be filled with audience pleasing favourites from their much-hailed 3 Feet High and Rising. And that they delivered, bringing truth to “three is the magic number”. The booming brass section (who could not be seen but were definitely heard) laid down the old school hip-hop and classic jazzy foundations upon which the legendary trio could drop their almighty words.

“Bounce your hands, bounce your hands” saw everyone doing just that. Both Posnuos and Trugoy would take sides on the stage and work up the audience to respond intermittently at will. If they said jump, everyone in the room would do just that. It must be an empowering feeling to see an audience so responsive to your beck and call. At one point they urged the audience to “not push the ladies around too much, y’all”. Damn straight!

And, of course, the room was more than happy to sing along when they came back out for the ultimate Ring Ring. But in despite of the crowd-pleasing efforts made by the hip-hop giants, at this point I was pretty well pissed-off and was apparently acting like I had just dropped an ‘asshole pill’ or been on the ‘jerk juice’ due to the given spatial circumstances. And I wasn’t the only one.

The earlier acts this evening played in the more suitable Gershwin Room, so why the front bar at the Espy? Supposedly the Gershwin Room has a smaller capacity, though the stage in there is elevated at least so you can still see from the back of the crowd. So in order to make a buck or two by selling a few more tickets (at 85 bucks a pop), they overloaded the usually subdued front bar at The Espy.

And to also add to my overall disappointment, the jugs of beer seem to have gone up substantially in price. We’re all in a global economic crisis here, and I need a goddamn beer! So finding myself surprisingly sober and still unable to write a more detailed review, I leave you with this thought… Whoever was the sensibility-challenged nitwit who booked De La Soul here should definitely be nominated for The Friday Fuckwit this week on Triple J. They’d surely get my vote.

Share this review on Facebook