All Tomorrow’s Parties at Asbury Park,NJ: the hip hop connection
October 3rd, 2011 by Mr. C
Chuck D, Flavor Flav, DJ Lord, Professor Griff, and the S1W’s better known as Public Enemy # 1 performed at the All Tomorrow’s Parties in Asbury Park, NJ last weekend! They were accompanied by a live band which added another layer of funkiness to the situation along with the familiar screeching sounds of the PE sirens! Ree-mix! Part of me wanted the tracks to sound exactly like the cuts from the album, but the live band definitely added another tiered layer of flavor in ya’ ear which included some heavy guitar solos along with the funk in your face bass guitar and drums! Public Enemy were scheduled to play the entire Fear of the Black Planet album, but since Mogwai had to cancel because of health reasons, PE stepped up to the plate and played a two hour set of organized chaos! Chuck D, Flavor Flav, and crew always puts on a great live show! Flavor Flav stepped onto the stage wearing a hoodie but it slowly got unraveled into a Walter Payton # 34 jersey which eventually got morphed into a Run DMC shirt wearing his famous large clock to protect his neck! What time is it?! Chuck D would swirl around the wireless mic like a steel chain used as a weapon before tossing it in the air, casually darting off to catch it, and then swinging the mic with a baseball bat motion! Home run! Flavor Flav went full boar with his familiar knee high stomps, alternating knock’em out, sock’em out, left fist-right fist two step moves! Besides Fear of the Black Planet, PE played hits like Don’t Believe the Hype, Bring the Noise, Can’t Truss it, Shut’em Down, Rebel without a Pause, He got game, & Black Steel in the hour of chaos to just name a few! Some fun moments from the show included a fan going on stage to meet Chuck D & Flavor Flav and to recite lyrics from Don’t Believe the Hype before he proceeded to stage dive back to the floor with NO apparent arms waiting to keep him afloat! Mind you, he was a big guy! Flavor Flav also showed his worth while playing Timebomb on the drums!
Kool Keith, Ced Gee, & TR Love otherwise known as Ultramagnetic MC’s with the help of Kut Masta Kurt on the steels generated a bit of ultra g-funk themselves! Only Moe Luv & Tim Dog would be absent from the performance. It was great to see the swagger of Ced Gee and Kool Keith attack the stage! Kool Keith’s abstract lyrics accompanied by his high pitched tone is akin to a boxer shuffling back and forth with confidence in the ring to also know that he can still sting you with jabs of lyrical madness from outer space! Ced Gee is the total opposite as his no nonsense, pit bull like attitude comes straight at ya’ like a mike tyson right cross when he delivers his aggressive lyrical flow! Ced Gee’s ‘Delta Force one’ tune is still one of my favorite tracks from the Critical Beatdown album. Ultramagnetic MC’s style of sampling really changed the game of hip hop and added another funky dimension to the art form. TR Love & Kool Keith made sure to mention to the ATP crowd that Ced Gee was the mastermind behind all of the beats and production of Ultramagnetic! He also lent more than a helping hand in producing Boogie Down Production’s Criminal Minded. Mad ‘ree-speck’ mang!! The Ultra set that night included songs from the Critical Beatdown, Four Horsemen, & Dr. Octagon albums! Ego Trippin, Watch me now, one two-one two, Delta Force one, Ease back, give the drummer some, funky, & Poppa large were all represented!
El-P, DJ Mr. Len, & Bigg Jus collectively known as Company Flow, cold crushed the Asbury Park Convention center to a modest crowd before Public Enemy uprooted the stage! The ATP festival would be the 3rd reunion show for Company flow this year. Chocko is a big fan of CF and he attended the 1st reunion performance at Santos Party House in nyc last july. For myself, I’m a late comer to the Company Flow house party as I was stuck in a bubble listening to the Lost Boyz, Geto Boys, EPMD, & KRS-One. After listening to their set at the ATP festival, I asked myself: what took me so long to rock this funky joint?! My big bobble head really dug the Vital Nerve & the 8 steps to perfection tunes! I gotta catch up with the Funcrusher album!
Portishead was the headliner of the festival and they curated the event as well. It was much thanks to them along with the ATP organizers who made this smorgasbord of bands possible. It all started with the vision of the bands they wanted to see perform! Ultramagnetic MC’s, Public Enemy, Jeff Mangum, Swans, & The Pop Group are usually not mentioned in the same sentence but yet all have influenced many in the music industry. I might have found a music festival that is just as eclectic as my tastes in music!
Portishead also flew under my radar in the mid 1990’s. After I listened to their 1st album ‘Dummy’, I got hooked! Track # 2, Sour Times sounds like they share the same sample(Monk Higgins’s “Little Green Apples”) as Gang Starr’s “Code of the Streets”! The slow tempo, hip hop beats along with some funky sampling and turntable scratching coupled with the soul & jazz inspired vocals of Beth Gibbons really adds a trance like state of mind to groove in order to show and prove! Beth has that smooth, hypnotic, & mesmerizing vocals that sort of reminds me of Lisa Stansfield! Geoff Barrow, the drummer & turntablist is clearly influenced by hip hop which is why Public Enemy, Ultramagnetic MC’s, & Company Flow were on the same bill! Portishead played on Saturday & Sunday. I went to the Saturday show and it was amazing! The lead singer even surfed the crowd! I heard on Sunday’s performance, Chuck D came out on stage to lend some of his vocals from Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos to Portishead’s Machine Gun beat! Here’s the setlist and neat writeup of Portisheads’ performance on Saturday by Stereogum.
Reggie Watts, who I will loosely call the greatest entertainer provided a nice comedic relief to an otherwise dreary and rainy friday night on day 1 of the ATP Festival. I’m not sure how to describe Reggie but his mashup of improv with singing, the human beat box, sampling, recording loops on the fly, and comedy is something I’ve never seen before. He truly is a one man wrecking studio, a real talented mofo! Check this dude out if you get a chance! Your blood pressure will thank you!
Tags: all tomorrows parties, asbury park, atp festival, music
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