Live Review: Saul Williams w/ Guests, November 17th, Vancouver BC
November 19th, 2009 Filed under: Reviews - Live, Uncategorized by admin
(Photo – Scott Alexander)
Live Review – Saul Williams w/ Guests
Tuesday November 17th, 2009
Venue, Vancouver, British Columbia
Venue still stands after Saul Williams got through with it. This is surprising if you consider the fact that the bass was thumping so loudly all night drinks were literally skittering across tables. The night started out with Houston, Texas-based act American Fangs stepping up to the plate, delivering their unique mix of totally ordinary hard rock. While the music itself was as bland as Kenny G’s shower curtain they actually made quite the show of it. At one point the lead singer jumped into the moshpit with his microphone in his hand and took a shot to the nuts which he shrugged off like a bronze-cullioned Sean Connery.
Next up was Earl Greyhound, a New York three-piece that blew the roof off the place with their psychedelic Zeppelin-inspired shreddery in spite of their name giving the impression they’re comprised of former Fleet Foxes members. Third up was CX KiDTRONiK & Tchaka Diallo, who exploded onto the stage from nowhere and cranked shit up a notch for all of fifteen minutes with their crazy-assed grimey beats and over-the-top outfits.
Finally, with a roar from the crowd, Saul Williams slithered onto the stage like a hip-hop reptile and funk-molested the crowd for the next hour and a half. Performing his last show in the “Niggy Tardust” persona on the very stage in which he debuted it, Saul ascended the scene clad in a golden cape, purple suit jacket, and huge tasseled boots. All done up with sparkling face paint and technicolor feathers in his hair like a modern-day George Clinton he strutted about confidently, exuding funky pheromones which likely melted every panty in a three-block radius. Perfectly comfortable dancing around the stage like a lithe groove-snake on the prowl, Saul had complete control over the audience the entire time on-stage, ramping them up at his leisure and then calming them down with snippets of his terrific slam poetry only to ramp them up again with his kickin’ beats. While some might cringe at reading the words “slam poetry” it actually worked perfectly as he used it to segue between songs, changing the mood depending on which track was coming up next.
For the finale he whipped the crowd into a frenzy with a raucous version of “List of Demands(Reparations)”, before he once again calmed them down with some poetic nuggets and then exited gracefully, shaking hands and dishing out high-fives all the way.
By A.W. Reid
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