Who Do You Think You Are? (& The Roots Concert Review)

I need to know how some people were raised... SERIOUSLY!  The lack of concern & common courtesy in situations where the code of conduct should not have to be reviewed or repeated to you is PERPLEXING. With that said, lemme tell you about my night with The Roots.

We arrived about 40 minutes before the doors opened at the 9:30 Club & of course my stalker Mr. D. Hawk was there. He whipped around me for 40 minutes non-stop. I don't know how people in Chicago deal with that mess. The wind became quite torturous around the 25th minute of waiting.

Once inside, ?estlove was spinning a Teena Marie set that had me JAMMIN! and he looked so CAYOOT!

I checked his Twitter page & realized he was going to be spinning for a MINUTE! Most of The Roots were north of Philly which was where the blizzard- that SKIPPED the area around I-95 in Maryland all together- had dumped the most snow on. (Seriously the weather map had a big bald spot in the middle where I-95 was in Maryland, but to the east & west, they got POUNDED by powder). So we settled in... did a lil two-stepping & it was like a live version of VH1 Soul's Soul School. He played al ot of the ORIGINAL songs from which some of raps greatest beats were derived. But he got DEEP, there were somethings I NEVER thought I'd hear the original for, but of course he had them! He even played a go-go set that had me wanting to rep my hood, HARD! A little too hard as I twisted my ankle a lil when he played "Uh Oh!" How embarrassing!

After 2 hours.... *sigh* It started getting crowded at the front. We were about 4 people from the stage. Suddenly this group of three: 2 girls & a guy come SQEEEZING by. The beau, being hte nice guy he is steps back for them to get through. The first girl passes him, the guy passes him, the third girl? STOPS right in front of him, turns to the stage & starts jamming.

Me: Is she FOR REAL right now?

Him: *silently serious side eye*

Me: You've GOT to be kidding me!

Him: *DEADLY serious side eye*

There was a group of girls behind us that saw the whole thing happen & they were giving her the WIDE eyes of disbelief. For those of you that DON'T see the issue... let me break it break it down: When in a crowd of people, if you are saying excuse me & someone moves to let you by, you should MOVE BY THEM. Saying excuse me & then standing in the spot from which they moved to let you through is rude. But then commencing to tossing your hair hither & yon and partying all over said spot AND said person is just ignorant. The three of them acted as if they were the only 3 people there, especially the last one. At one point she ended up in front of me, swinging her hair all over me & my phone as I tweeted about the possibility of catching a charge that night if she didn't cease & desist immediately!

I was having flashbacks of a similar incident from back in my partying days. I was at Ozio with my girl J one night. We were on the third floor, which is a lil snug. Some drunk chick & her boyfriend comes near us & begins to dance all over the place. Including up on J. I grabbed her by the shoulders and told her like a mother speaking to an insolent child: "YOU need to get up, sweetie. You are dancing on my friend." Now I need you all to understand that we were ok with bumping into people on the dancefloor but this chick was giving FULL BODY CONTACT and winding down to the ground, J was NOT having it and neither was I! She looked at me drunkenly as if I were joking & continued to dance FACING J. She dropped down & had her head between J's legs- shoulders brushing J's legs & we lost it! J grabbed her by the hair & YANKED her up and said: "YOU gotta go!" At this point her boyfriend, comes over and is all hey hey hey, what's going on. I immediately jump in his face and tell him: "You need to get your girl!", J steps in close & suddenly there's no problem... uh huh, ok, what's up? SHUT UP!

SO... as my hands were BURNING from wanting to have her hair wrapped firmly around it, I decided instead to give her the STIFF arm in the back tolet her know that she was invading my LIL bit of personal space. Eventually, I had to move to the side and let the beau run interference. But in her quest to get closer to the front, she ended up between a guy in a wheelchair and his friend who at first was leaning on the wheelchair, but by the time she had finished rocking him out of the way, HER left side was behind the chair. Mind you all of this was going on while ?est was spinning to fill up the time. Eventually, I guess their highs came down & they just PLOPPED DOWN indian style in the middle of the floor.  The beau was like where is your phone, you HAVE to take picture. I whipped out the sexy Evo, made sure the flash was ON & took this pic:

YUP! she was looking right at me and NOPE! I wasn't the onliest one to take a pic. The one in the purple was the personal space invader, the tall GUY in the middle was the hair flinger & the one staring longingly into the camera was the one jumping up & down & shouting "WOOOO!" Security came over & told them to get up and they seemed totally upset by that.

My question is: How were you raised that you don't think there is anything wrong with acting this way? This is ignorant behavior by definition: b : resulting from or showing lack of knowledge or intelligence. They really acted like they didn't know that ANY of this was NOT OK!
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FINALLY, at about 10:30 the show started and the crowd shenanigans got kicked up a notch. I saw one couple make their way almost all the way up to the front, only to be pushed RIGHT back! And they had the nerve to look appalled! Then there was the guy that tried his hardest to get by about 7 people, but we all put up a united front & refused to let anyone else by us, for no other reason than we had been standing there for over 2 hours & had EARNED the right to do so. Much the same way they thought they had earned the right to show up late & just make their way to the front. One guy even asked one girl Do you mind if we get rght there & he pointed to a space that was maybe big enough for an anorexic flamingo to stand in on ONE leg, mind you. Her: "There's no room!" Me: "YES, we mind." but he wasn't talking to me so....

Anyway, The Roots came out with the energgy on 10 & just built it up from there. After all that spinning  & spinning ?estlove was CRISP on his hits! F Knuckles was all smiles as he worked it out on the percussion. Apparently the look for the night was geek chic as almost all of them had on plaid, or a slim fit sweater. Except for Quest & Kirk who were rocking a 9:30 Club hoodie & some sort of trench coat made out of a baby bear, respectively. As the show went on & they heated it up Tariq came out of his plaid jacket, Damon shed his V-neck sweater & Frankie slipped out of his sweater... all without missing a beat! They played EVERYTHING... Including hitting a GREAT go-go beat during Everybody is a Star that made my heart race. They smoothed it out with some swinging jazz injected into some tunes & ramping up the guitar & rocking out some others. They played hit after hit & jam after jam... taking SHORT pauses during which the band would freeze LITERALLY & Tariq would do what he does so well- swaggerin all over the stage talking it up and keeping the crowd HYPED after the long delay! The spotlights were great! Frankie & ?est went hit for hit and never lost the downbeat, which I am always impressed by, I'm way too ADD to play drums! The beau was impressed by Damon's energy level & hypeness while carrying that SOUSAPHONE. tariq made sure to point out: "Give it up for Damon AKA Tuba Gooding, Jr. on the SOUSAPHONE, he don't even play a f*****g tuba!" I died laughing because I knew that already! here's a quick visual...

Tuba:

Sousaphone:

Got it? GOOD!

Captain Kirk showed out on his spotlight doing his George Benson and his rockstar riffs. Kamal's solo came during a song they did inspired by Fela which I didn't dig because of whatever sound he was using on the keyboard... *shrug* and it was over shadowed by ?est flubbing the words 3 times to the point they had to STOP the song & start over because he kept laughing. And Owens bass solo had my stomach trembling because of how the sound was set up!!!

SO, in short, if you love LIVE music & have never been to a Roots show, you have to go! But beware that there seems to be a certain faction of Roots fans that like to think they are the only people there. This isn't just based on this one incident. But I saw similar incidents occur this summer.

Overall a great show, cool venue... AWESOME CHRISTMAS PRESENT!

WHEW!... that was alot! I'm so not going back to edit it either.... so NAH! :-P