Friday night of Musicfest NW. Shabazz Palaces are opening for Seattle’s Macklemore and Lewis. Macklemore’s music is mainstream like Wonder Bread. The result is a disparate mix of show goers. Hipsters. Para-professionals (I think half the mezzanine was formalizing what exactly the perfect tweet was for this show), clued in music/hip-hop lovers, and ubiquitous suburban tweens.
Shabazz Palaces’ 2011 release, Black Up, is an amazing work. Summarzied by the line in “free press and curl”
Catchy? Yes. But trendy? No.
The style is not verse-chorus-verse and the beats and lyrics are a weaving path inside the same song where the start and end may or may not be linear. The whole thing is a head trip in the best possible way.
Stage setup is a table with a laptop and some congas. Low frequency sound and the Roseland’s acoustics aren’t exactly like peanut butter and chocolate but thankfully the venue didn’t churn songs like “An echo from from the hosts that profess infinitum”, “free press and curl”, and “Recollections of the wraith” into a muddled mess. Palaceer Lazaro (aka Ishmael Butler) live sounded great.
No call and response. No corny I say “hey” you say “ho”. No one doing any kind of bullshit hype.
About six songs in, the tweens and bros had reached the end of their tolerance for hip hop that wasn’t pop sampled cock grabbing. Up went the “Macklemore! Macklemore! Macklemore!” chants.
Palaceer Lazaro handled it.
“Hold up. Hold up, now. You know the man is coming out here in just a few minutes, right?”
That shut it down. They closed out with their last song and left the stage.
This show in alot of ways felt like a missed opportunity. Unortunate. The music itself is superb. Palaceer Lazaro live sounds fantastic. Tone. Flow. Everything. Congas and a laptop just isn’t going to command an audience raised on video jump cuts and radio diluted hip-hop into listening. Really listening. Just plain truth. Shabazz Palaces are artists and I’m guessing they want the music to stand on it’s own merits. That is completely understandable. Without some kind of flash in the show? Converting the uninitiated mainstream seems like a difficult task. Totally wish them godspeed with the approach, though. Takes guts.
In this era with everyone moving from track to track so fast, this music getting lost in the shuffle would be a damn shame.
