Ghostface Killah with Adrian Younge

Last week’s Wu-Tang post was inspired by a show I’d seen the week before.  At Mississippi Studios here in Portland, Ghostface Killah joined Adrian Younge and his band Venice Dawn to kick off the Soul’d Out music festival.  The two acts recently collaborated on an ambitious concept album, Twelve Reasons to Die, that NPR just reviewed. 

I didn’t really know what to expect from the show.  The new album is only like 40 minutes long so I figured the band would probably just get an extended workout to lengthen the set.  Maybe they’d dig into some deeper cuts from Ghostface’s 20-years-and-counting career.  Thankfully, that’s basically what happened.  I wasn’t able to get in to the first show of the night but, due to some late-game heroics from the folks at MS Studios, I got into the second show (added after initial demand for the one show eclipsed expectations).  Part of me was worried that Ghost and gang wouldn’t have much gas in the tank for the second show (it started past midnight) but, once they got going, it was all good.  A few notes:

-It’d been a while since I’d been to a hip-hop show.  There were a lot of hands in the air, waving around like their owners just didn’t care.  There was a lot of call-and-response stuff, e.g. “say ho-oh,” and “say hell yeah.”  I was up front at first, behind a flimsy barrier that created some space between the stage and the crowd.  When Ghost hit the stage, he promptly told security to “get this muh-f—kin thing outta here, man,”  which elicited cheers and a surge forward.  Up close, I couldn’t really hear well – all the rapping sounded like barking and I had trouble picking out words.  So after a couple songs, I moved backward and was able to hear a lot better. 

-Younge’s band Venice Dawn was tight.  He had two guitarists (one who also busted out a flute here and there) who both had some serious effect-pedal-setups.  One guy would shred furiously while another would stomp a pedal and let these crisp, rippling chords echo out.  Or one guy would work the wah pedal while the other played a secret-agent-style riff.  It was all very Ennio-Morricone-Mayfield-Superfly, if that makes sense.

-I found the drummer very distracting.  He was certainly talented, and he played with real power, but he was showboating way too much for my tastes.  Spinning, twirling and flipping sticks flamboyantly, he just got on my nerves.  Seriously, that hot dog needed some mustard.  If you’ve ever seen this, you get the idea.

-Younge himself was definitely the bandleader.  In addition to really setting the mood with his atmospheric organ work, he took turns on electric piano and bass while taking breaks to engage the audience.  He introduced the story that frames the album, which I won’t get into here, and stepped up front periodically to narrate and further spin the tale.

-Understandably, Ghostface was the main attraction.  Before he even came out, people were chanting his name and various Wu-Tang things.  His voice was a little hoarse but he was still clearly articulating tongue-twisting rhymes and nimbly riding the beat.  The new material seemed to make him a little uncomfortable; it required him to play a role and to kind of do some acting (which is arguably what most gangsta rappers do anyway).  At one point, he was supposed to be ‘reading’ a letter from a female character whose part was played by a backup singer – she was offstage actually reading the letter so that Ghost ‘read’ it in her voice.  It was almost as awkward and clumsy as that last sentence.  At another point, the lights were completely cut and Ghost was surrounded by hooded, ghoulishly-made-up kids holding candles while reciting some lines.  It was kinda cheesy and even though he was a good sport, Ghostface didn’t really seem that into it.  Maybe he was just tired, jet-lagged.

Ghost and Younge (from a phone-camera).

-Highlight: “Mighty Healthy” from 2000’s Supreme Clientele has been one of my favorites for a long time.  The song’s built on a sample from a poppy funk-soul band from the ‘70s called The Sylvers (here they are on Soul Train), and Younge’s crack band handled it with ease.  So hearing it live, shouting along to the same lyrics I used to recite alone in my room, was pretty tight. 

Clan in Da Front.

It’s been 20 years since 36 Chambers.  Enter The Wu-Tang, the landmark release from a group of nine rappers from all corners of NYC’s Staten Island, hit the streets in 1993.  No one had ever heard anything like it before.  As a young hip-hop-hater with little respect for the genre, this is the one album that broke through, grabbed me and opened my eyes.

I was a rock-and-roll kid, the fiercely passionate kind of fan that thought my taste in music was the only one that mattered.  If you didn’t believe that The Who invented punk rock, that Led Zeppelin set the stage for hard rock, and that The Beatles were the best thing to ever happen to music, then I summarily dismissed your taste in music.  I adopted the absolutist view that “rap is crap,” announcing it to anyone who’d listen and even going so far as to scrawl it on my desk and binder during my middle-school years.  In my immature, undeveloped mind, I was fighting the good fight for the side of rock and roll.  Like the crusaders before me, I was determined to convert the heathens and heretics, so that they too might see the light.  I sincerely believed I was looking out for their interests, that getting them to understand why The Rolling Stones were so great would be doing them a favor.  Yes, it was unfair and presumptuous; I was naïve and haughty.  But then, at about 14, I began to accept the fact that other people listen to what they want for the same reason I listen to what I want -- because they like it, plain and simple.

My college roommate, freshman year, can be credited for really exposing me to hip-hop music and, in particular, the Wu-Tang Clan’s debut album.  Looking back, I think what initially compelled me to listen, to give rap a shot, was the drums.  I was an aspiring drummer (a rock drummer, of course) and the repetitive drum-patterns that characterized hip-hop were easy for me to follow and to practice; they let me get comfortable with the coordinated movement of my four limbs.  It started with ?uestlove and The Roots but then, with “the blast of a hype verse,” Wu-Tang hit me.  The beats, bookended with bits of dialogue from old kung-fu movies, were built on smooth-old-soul samples but had a rugged, raw quality that really caught my ear.  Naturally, the lyrics began sinking in. 

The Wu-Tang Clan (from left): Raekwon, Masta Killa, Method Man, Ghostface Killah, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, GZA (crouching), Inspectah Deck, U-God, RZA.

Part of what made Enter The Wu-Tang so appealing was its lyrical content, and the rappers who wrote and spit those lyrics.  Never before had a rap crew counted nine dudes as members.  That these nine dudes each possessed a unique vocal style, both in terms of voice and delivery, was what made the whole thing so fresh.  For example, “Bring Da Ruckus” opens with the high-pitched, hyper-active Ghostface Killah.  He jumps on the track, “tough like an elephant tusk,” tacking a syllable to each two-four snare-crack.  Before too long though, Raekwon busts in, presenting a gruffer, more ominous tone and aura.  Inspectah Deck comes next, with a densely layered flow, followed by GZA and his punchy, metaphor- and simile-laden rhymes.  And each song on the record was like this!  Each rapper took his own quick turn and brought something different to the table (perhaps most notably in the case of Ol’ Dirty Bastard), making the reference to Voltron on the interlude near “Can It All Be So Simple” all the more apt. 

The verses were at turns aggressive, boastful and violent -- all hallmarks of the hip-hop that would follow and be commercially successful.  However, the album wasn’t all about guns and drugs.  Harsh tales of hood-life and laments about growing up in low-income, high-crime housing projects were sprinkled throughout.  And none of them seemed really exaggerated.  When Deck rapped on “C.R.E.A.M.,” that “it gots to be accepted, that what?  That life is hectic,” I believed him.  And at 18 years old, in a dorm room, I felt him.  To a sheltered kid who grew up in suburbia, in one of the whitest states in the country, 36 Chambers was like entering a whole new world.  From the foreign slang to the shockingly gruesome and explicit lyrics, from the realistic (at least to young, uncultured me) skits to the outsize personalities, from the kung-fu-blaxploitation aesthetic to the artfully arranged and constructed beats, I was beyond intrigued.  I was hooked.

Enter The Wu-Tang opened my mind to hip-hop.  Before, I was closed off, like the shorty who “ain’t trying to hear what [Wu’s] kicking in his ear.”  Foolishly, I had judged an entire genre before even giving it a chance.  I soon dove in, consuming material from The Roots, OutKast, Eminem, Souls of Mischief and the Hieroglyphics crew, Dr. Octagon, Common and many, many others.  Also, I suppose it goes without saying that I dug into the solo projects of the entire, extended Wu-Tang Clan.  These were the days of Napster, when a dorm-denizen with a high-speed internet connection could sample hours of new music on a whim.  So I did -- “I got with a sick-ass clique and went all out;” I was “out for the gusto.” 

But still, all praise is due to Wu-Tang.  Twenty years ago, nine rappers (some of them real-life cross-town rivals) came together to put their stamp on hip-hop, changing it and the music industry in the process and eventually shattering my senselessly-erected walls.  And to this day, 36 Chambers is influential -- you can hear echoes of it on all sorts of contemporary stuff.  It still resonates, it still moves and inspires.  Hip-hop-heads and critics alike still respect it.  NPR, a bastion of self-satisfied, white-bread media, even applauds it.  Indeed, as ODB would famously shout on the album's 1997 follow-up, “Wu-Tang is here forever, motherfuckers.”

The Rolling Stones, 50th Anniversary Tour

Today I did something I never thought I’d do: I paid a bunch of money to see a band of geezers play music they made 40ish years ago.  The Rolling Stones have long been one of my favorite favorite bands.  But I’m a superficial fan.  Something about old men playing the music of young men, prancing about like the 20-something bad-boys they once were, makes me kinda uncomfortable.  But whatever.  Mick Taylor (lead guitarist from 1969-74) will be there.  This is sort of a once-in-a-lifetime thing.  So I’m pretty stoked.  Still, I’ve seen other older bands and ended up being more saddened than stoked.  I want to remember the Stones as they were, as the sexualized antithesis to The Beatles, as the dangerous ‘don’t-play-with-me-cause-you’re-playing-with-fire’ dudes, as the elegantly wasted ‘torn and frayed’ country-blues rockers, not wrinkly old coots.  But like I said, I’m pretty stoked.  Once in a lifetime and all.  Here’s hoping that these old dudes don’t ruin or pervert the image and ideal I hold so dear.

Oregon Public Broadcasting

In recent news, I’ve secured a position as an on-air DJ at a division of Oregon Public Broadcasting, OPBmusic.  I produce a weekly three-hour show featuring acts from the Northwest along with everything from indie and mainstream rock and roll, pop and soul, folk and country, and jazz.  I like to say I play a bit of here-and-now, as well as some there-and-then.  It’s pretty fun.  My show runs every Sunday, from 8-11am and again from 5-8pm, Pacific time.  Turn on, tune in, hang out.  Information on how to listen can be found on the right side of the website’s home page, here.