I saw a concert last week

After milking my Lollapalooza experience as much as I could, it's time to move on and prove to my loyal readers that I am indeed still alive. Since concert going seems to be such a good well to dip into for content I decided to go to another show. Here is my, until now, unreleased review of the Cool Kids and The Clipse in Grand Rapids, MI.

I'll leave out the diatribe on how crappy Grand Rapids is... alright maybe not crappy, but seriously how is there not a fast food join anywhere in "downtown" and why does it take 45 minutes to make a patty melt in a bar and grill.
...I guess I lied, but seriously Grand Rapids, I'm disappointed in you.

Anyway, I actually went up to there see a concert, a pretty good one as a matter of fact. The show was at some joint called The Intersection, a pretty decent spot considering the town it in which it resides. The two opening acts were the worst live acts I have seen to date. The first was a group called AB Coconut Bra (or something like that), and they pretty much sounded how one would expect a group called AB Coconut Bra to sound. It was basically a rapper (think really bad Common wannabe) with a five piece band... a bassist, drummer, trombonist (a dude who looked like he got plucked off a marching band practice field and was horribly out of place) a guitarist (who looked like he was plucked out of a pool of rejected Tim McGraw studio guitarists) and a chubby sax player complete with sideways Detroit D cap who pantomimed everything the rapper said when he wasn't squawking on his sax... I seriously had to look away half a dozen times because I was so embarrassed for this guy. After they finished the most painfully long 20 minute set in music history, some group called Almost Famous who hailed themselves as "straight out of Grand Rapids" (always a promising start for two white rappers) proceed to hop around the stage with songs about how they like 18 year old girls and how they can run really fast from the cops... I'm still not sure if they were serious, but I think/hope they were some kind of satire of life in Grand Rapids, and now that I think about it, I guess they were whether they know it or not..

Eventually the professionals took the stage. At first I was surprised The Clipse came on first, although I guess it did make sense since half of the the Cool Kids duo hails from nearby Detroit, but still... I've only heard one Cool Kids song on the radio ever. The Clipse proved they are the more polished act of the two headliners, ripping up an hour long set of most of their notable tracks from Hell Hath No Fury and Lord Willin', although club banger "When the Last Time" was absent from the set... which the audience was reminded of when the dj played it immediately after they finished their show, They finished their set with the second single "I'm Good" from their forthcoming album Til The Cakset Drops, a song I've had trouble getting out of my head since.

The Cool Kids played a fairly mediocre show about two thirds of which was from their recent Gone Fishing mixtape, which I prematurely described as almost classic, but in reality is fairly mediocre. My bad. The best two tracks of which are described as interludes on the track listing and were absent from their set. The beat on track "Oscar the Grouch", one of my favorite Cool Kids tracks, sounded like it was being played on shitty computer speakers instead of a live stage and pretty much ruined the song...probably on the dj since the sound quality was decent otherwise. Overall I wasn't disappointed, but the Clipse definitely set the bar high and the Cool Kids didn't live up to it.

One of the night's highlights came via Pusha T of the Clipse who actually walked around and chatted with the crowd between the Clipse set and the Cool Kids's and actually stood in the crowd for most of the Cool Kids show. I think he was probably just riding out his high, but even so, what does that say about Grand Rapids nightlife when a rap star has nothing better to do than stand in the audience he just played to...