Yeeeeaaaahhhh Booooiiiii!

Tuesday night I went to see Public Enemy at the Melkweg. After trying to follow a Dutch hip hop support act, I was loving the warm up DJ spinning the likes of KRS 1. Initially Public Enemy lost a lot of credibility in my eyes when they refused to appear because an empty plastic bottle was thrown on the stage. Then after rapping over the PA system that it was "not cool" to throw things on stage they finally appeared with two burly dancers. Not a good start...

I mean come on - it was the 20th anniversary tour and what kinda hip hop band needs a choreographed act?! But it became clear later on that these two gorillas were not dancers, they were bouncers to keep an eye on the crowd. Their pathetic dancing skills, evil crowd stares and ability to hold onto the band members whilst they hovered off the end of the stage high 5'ing hoards of screaming fans was easy proof they were not for show.

Things did pick up tho and it ended up being a monstrous set. By the end of the night I could no longer jump up and down because I was that desperate for the toilet! Flava Flav is clearly a nutter. As quoted by Chuck D on the night he is "the oldest teenager in the world". Plenty of classics, including some tributes to the likes of Run DMC amongst others. The band musicians also rocked out some quality Jimi Hendrix and AC DC - even Flava Flav had a surprisingly impressive bash on the drums.

DJ Lord was quality - his scratching was fast, very very fast in his solo set. It's the first time I think I have seen/heard Final Scratch in person and I was pretty impressed the computing power of 1 laptop was all that was needed to produce those sounds at that speed. But enough of the new school, I'm looking forward to seeing the vinyl master himself tonight at Paradiso - Grand Master Flash.