2006 goes by

2006 saw me go into hyper drive with hip hop records. My last post expressed my fascination of Jurassic 5's live performance in Amsterdam which prompted me to take a trip to Munich to see The Roots play live on December 7.

My trip to Munich also opened many chapters as the city provided me with much more options when it comes to searching for rap records. So it happened I managed to bag Blackalicious’ debut album Melodica back in ’94 as well as DJ Shadow’s Pre-emptive Strike in the form of LP’s and RUN-DMC’s Raising Hell plus Hendrix’s The Band of Gypsies on CD.

The performance of the Roots on the 7^th provided me with another view of hip-hop’s musical boundaries. The Roots largely differ to J5 as there was no DJ present and the stage set-up looked pretty much like any other band with a drum set, keyboards, a couple of guitars, a bass and percussions. Where J5 had Nu-Mark providing the basic beats, ?uestlove did the same for The Roots with totally different effect to his LA counterpart. DJ Nu-Mark was a one man producing machine with the help of 4 MC’s whereas ?questlove was largely providing steady beats helped by The Legendary Roots Crew’s® funk crew together with the rapping of Black Thought. Yet their similarities also show heavily with The Roots playing almost their entire set medley mixing tracks from 2006’s Game Theory as well as previous albums.

I never thought in my life time I would be able to see solo performances by musicians in an actual concert. Almost right from the beginning, perhaps 15 minutes into the gig we were entertained to L. Ron Hubbard’s bass slapping solo followed by ?questlove and their percussionist’s 20 minute psychedelic percussion bonanza. Half-way through the gig my man Jan commented whilst the Roots were playing ‘You Got Me’ that the song didn’t quite have the same pezzas without Jill Scott’s vocals. Luckily for us Capn’ Kirk helped us out by letting rip a guitar solo straight out of Funkadelic’s guitar solo book. Yet the fascination doesn’t end there as The Roots paid homage to their musical influences by slipping quick live samples of artists from the Police, The Sugar Hill Gang to Led Zeppelin. These live samples were slipped between solos I mentioned earlier which added to the feeling that you were half-way between a Public Enemy concert with one of Funkadelic’s.

It was a shame that we picked a spot in the hall close to the toilet passage which annoyed me no end and when the band played music I wasn’t particularly aware of, the nuisance of the passing crowd overtook the fun. Yet I can’t complain as it was an eye opening performance, completely different to Jurassic 5 yet staying to the basic values of rap and hip-hop, fat funky beats and tons of creativity.

The evening was capped by us going to ?uestlove’s DJ spinning in the Registratur, a nice small club in the centre of Munich. We stayed till about 4am after boogie-ing all night long to tracks and breaks of Soul and Rap’s past. Felt like I was in 1984!