So last week, me and the missus took in some quality live music. I had heard that Aimee Mann was playing at the Minnesota Zoo's amphitheater on the 12th of June, and booked those tickets well, well in advance. I had also seen that Kanye West would be performing at the Target Center on the 11th, but initially wasn't going to go. That wasn't due to any lack of awesome on Mr. West's part, just that I've never been to a stadium-venue show like that, and I tend to prefer a little more intimacy for live music, if you know what I mean.
Then I saw some of the props Mr. West was going to be using for his stage show, including the 20-foot-tall gold holographic dancing girls, and decided I'd kick myself for missing it. So we ended up seeing Mr. West on the 11th and Ms. Mann on the 12th.
The Kanye West show turned out to be pretty damned incredible. Sure, the performers were pretty far away, and the acoustics in the hall meant that if you didn't already know the song, you didn't have a prayer of catching the lyrics, but the energy and spectacle was well worth the trip. Lupe Fiasco opened the show, and I found that instead of just waiting for them to play Superstar, I was grooving on every track. Lupe's got an incredible flow, which he somehow sustains while doing everything but cartwheels on the stage. His style is equal parts nerdcore and gangsta, I would say, so it's part "check out my gold rims" and part "check out my giant battlebot."
After Lupe, N.E.R.D. took the stage. I wasn't as impressed with them as I was expecting to be, but they still got everyone, even my pasty 30-year-old self, jumping. I did, in fact, throw my hands in the air, and with no irony I waved them like I just didn't care.
The third opener was Rihanna, of Um-ba-rella fame. I wasn't expecting much from her, but was pleasantly surprised -- she's got a lot of personality and spirit. Her voice isn't as powerful as, say, Christina Aguilera, but she really gets into the songs. She's also ten pounds of sexy in a nine-pound bag. I maintain, by the way, that Um-ba-rella is a pretty damn decent song. Sure, it's a friend/end together/weather kind of thing, but there's no denying the propulsive chord changes and the giant, giant hook.
Between Rihanna and Kanye, they pulled a giant curtain over the stage and spent a good half an hour putting things together. When the curtain opened, we saw a moonscape-looking stage with a 10x10 video screen horizontally on top of part of it, another 20x10 video screen vertically sticking out of it, and a giant screen behind the whole thing. Kanye was lying on top of the video screen with his eyes closed, and a computerized female voice said, "wake up, Mr. West."
Yup, Kanye turned his stage show into an incredibly nerdy science-fiction rap opera. Turns out his spaceship, Jane, had run out of power, stranding him on an alien planet. He had to find the one thing that would fuel the spaceship and return him home, while kicking the shit out of his greatest hits. Spoiler: the only thing powerful enough to take the spaceship home was Kanye's giant ego. No foolin'.
So it was an incredible evening, and a reminder that those who get too caught up in labels and irony (more on that in the next post) miss out. If I had thought, "wait, I'm not a fourteen-year-old girl, I'm a 30-year-old white nerd and music snob; I can't go to this show, and it's totally beneath me, anyway," I wouldn't have seen these amazingly talented performers rock an arena full of good vibrations for damn near three hours. It was great stuff, and not to be missed.
I have less to say about Aimee Mann, mostly because as a 30-year-old white nerd music snob, she's definitely what I ought to be listening to. She put on a great show, though, with completely unaffected, ego-free banter, dealing with accolades and heckling alike with humor and charm. For example, some douchebag kept shouting "Voices Carry!" until she finally stopped, said, "now, you know I'm not going to play Voices Carry. What the hell's the matter with you? Check it out, this guy is totally losing his shit," all with a wry smile that got even the douchebag heckler laughing. I do wish she would have played more old stuff, as the set was mostly off her new album, but we got some of the classics, too. And she finally acknowledged the weirdness of the whole "we go away for a minute, then you applaud until we come back for the encore" thing. And then went ahead and did it anyway. Class all the way, Ms. Mann.
So if you like good music, some recommendations:
!#$@%# Smilers -- Aimee Mann's new album. I keep hearing that it's too similar to her other stuff, yadda yadda, but I loved it on first listen and it just keeps getting better. Like, say, Cake, Aimee Mann's someone with a definitive sound and a limited vocal style who somehow never gets boring.
The Cool -- Lupe Fiasco's second album, and the only one I have at the moment. It's not a home run -- there are a couple of songs that are fueled by samples made out of pure obnoxiousness. But the concept is neat, the lyrics are intelligent, and it's definitely worth a few spins.
Graduation -- Kanye West's album is a year old now, but I'm still listening to it with regularity. There's just something about that guy -- the giant ego, the dumb smart lyrics, the smart dumb lyrics, the off-the-wall production -- it's a good antidote to most mainstream hip-hop, which tends to be bitches 'n' bling set to somebody banging two keys on a Casio.
So yeah. New blog. Maybe I will write in it. We'll see.
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