Show: The Freeform Shuffle with Cookies & Dirt and DJS Mickey Massacre, Ken the Soul Rebel, and Eric lab Rat
Cost: Free
Things I missed to be there: The usual Wednesday night jive
Reason for going: I booked the whole damn thing (and performed)
So like it says before, I booked this show so I can already tell you I liked everything. Ken the Soul Rebel surprised me, not just with his encyclopedic knowledge of glam, roots rockabilly, mod soul and punk, but his ability to make it all fit together live (many people have one of those qualities but not the other). Conversely, Mickey Massacre laid me out with a creeper case full of obsessively filed disks that put a hurt on me. The real stars of the show, however, were the hip hop act Cookies & Dirt.
Cookies & Dirt are the closest thing I've seen to a rap act that might break big (respectable big, yknow, like Rhymesayers, Anticon, or Mush level) since I saw Typical Cats back in the late 90s. That's partly my fault, of course, for failing to catch Kanye, Lupe, Rhymefest, and Psalm One before they hit. At home, I've got stacks of cds of Chicago hip hop groups THAT were good live but couldn't pull it together for an album. Most of these are disciples of the spoken word/open mic scene, and most of them suffer from the same problem: too much emphasis on the lyrics, and not enough on the beats, on making asses shake, or on asses in general. That's why great groups like Il.De.Script and Organic Mind Unit are barely a memory, and Twista is walkin around in diamond-studded boxer briefs.
I'm not gonna say that Cookies & Dirt isn't afflicted as well, but they're working on it. The music they're working on isn't super dancy but it does veer into experimental. I think that if the band wants to focus on Idris Goodwin's lyrics, they need to move even further in that direction, into Busdriver territory. Idris doesn't need the music to lead you to him, he's got a commanding, Chuck D kind of voice that will get to you no matter how obtuse the beats are. The band had a pretty good crowd come in to see them, too. The people who make predictions keep talking about how Chicago is about to break, and it's gonna be because of the unpretensious, weirdo hiphop that's been breaking lately. Flosstradamus is almost a foregone conclusion but nobody knows who else might be part of the movement. Heiruspecs could do it but they'll need to do something surprising. Vyle has a good chance, as do Serengeti and Brenmar. I'm not going to say that they've missed their chance but I'm pretty sure I can tell you that even though they deserve it, it won't be Verbal Kent, the J. Davis, Trio or Small Change. The world could use another live band hip hop group and, barring the possibility that I missed some hotness from the Chicago Drop cds, Cookies & Dirt are probly Chicago's greatest hope.
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