My Bologna Has a First Name (M.I.A. at S.O.B.’s)

This’ll be short, not only because the show was (and not at all because the performer was), but because I don’t know my hip from my hop.  There’s no grime in my apartment, cuzzin’s I use them Scrubbing Bubbles.

But I like M.I.A.’s Arular, even though every single member of the music press says I have to.  Won’t desperately analyze the thing – there’s plenty of that out there already – but its everythingness appeals to me.  I enjoy watching a well-prepared frog race around a blender, if only because that’s not such a bad metaphor for the world in which we live.  Someone said – I can’t recall who – that her music “sounds like the 21st century,” and I think that someone was absolutely right.  It helps that M.I.A. seems a bit ADD, that moods, tones, rhythms shift nearly to a fault; even in its sparest moments, it feels like a couple dozen things might be going on. 

“I bongo with my lingo.”  The Sri Lankan/English rapper raps about everything from bombs to blowjobs, refusing to stay on any one topic or in any one language for long. 

Multiculturalism, multicontextualism, multiwhatever.  Nothing is flippant, nothing is legitimate, everything is permitted.

“You wanna go?  You wanna wanna war?  Like P.L.O. I don’t surrendo.”

Sure, that.

My favorite moment on Arular comes about a minute into “Bingo” (not “B-I-N-G-O”, unfortunately).  This fuzzy metallic alarm clock sound starts grinding just off-beat out of the right channel.  And there you have my problem with her CD:  I consider it a great headphone album.

Like I said, it’s my problem, not hers.  The crowd at S.O.B.’s was desperate to dance, and she got the beat make it bangbangbang.  There were times during her short set that she nearly brought the floor to full Arulpragas’m.

I thought it was only O.K.

The opening act was Rio’s DJ Marlboro (can’t find his homepage, but here’s an interview), and while I have difficulty embracing the concept of DJ-as-performer, he played some really great stuff.  What little baile funk I’ve heard has been, while interesting, overly eccentric and jokey; the stuff Marlboro spun (God, I’m so white) was seriously good.

M.I.A. entered – forty minutes after her supposed start time – singing “Pull Up the People” to a choppy video clip of Tony Blair going on about “XL” (which turns out to be her label).  She and her co-MC confidently pranced back and forth across the small stage while a very stoned looking white DJ waved his hands a lot.

How is that not hip-hop kar’oke?

She mentioned something about missing/having lost her collaborator, DJ Diplo (who was playing last night at Rothko), but the guy behind the tables – who got called out on one mistake by the MCs – did absolutely nothing but Press Play.  No matter how happy and shiny M.I.A. was (and she was wearing this color-splotched white-and-silver jumpsuit that had me thinking, “shower curtain”), there just wasn’t much music being made, up there.  Gulang a lang a lang lang went the trolley, and the same five-minute video loop (tigers, birds, jets, bombers, check) flashed by.

It’s an old, tired argument.  Sorry.

The sound got exponentially better after Marlboro joined them on stage, even though he once confusingly tried to force in the theme from The Pink Panther.*  “Hombre” had a fantastic amount of energy, and “Bucky Done Gun” (in which M.I.A. replaced Kingston, London, etc. with the five Burroughs) was absolutely incredible (It was explosive!  It killed!  It blew the room away.  Etc. Ugh.).  But too much of the show felt like two girls and a Mr. Microphone.

The food wasn’t so good... and such small portions!  The whole act, including encore (hooray, more acronyms:  “U.R.a.Q.T.”), lasted less than fifty minutes.  Maybe she had a curfew.  But with Ticketbastard service charges, patrons were paying half a dollar/minute.  And that’s before tipping the washroom attendant.

Brooklyn Vegan was there, had more fun than I did, and took photos.

*Droppin’ some Hizzenry Mancini, yo.  Is Sony/MGM paying obscure artists to tease product placement into their acts?  First Cat Power, now DJ Marlboro...

I can’t remember the last time I was at S.O.B.’s.  That’s because I was really, really, really drunk.  Oh, champagne does bad things to me.

It was about a decade ago?  Maybe?  It was the night of A Company Xmas party and someone mentioned the club.  Apparently I suggested that we all pile into cars and cabs and such and get down there right away, and apparently I told everyone that [redacted] would pay for all of us to get in.  [Redacted] – who could certainly afford it – was such a sweet guy that he couldn’t say no, and wound up forking over admission for whole bunches of folks with whom he’d probably never even spoken. 

As soon as we got there, I decided I was too drunk to keep standing, and went home.

Apparently.

Hey, check this out!  It’s a full-on flash mobhunt in Brooklyn!  Tomorrow (6/9), 7PM, at the corner of Jay & York, it’s Manhunt DUMBO!  Metro hide-and-seek for adults; what a great idea.  (via The Gothamist)

They’ll be able to find me, easy.  I’ll be at Webster Hall yelling, “Spoooooooooooooon!” 

links: digg this    del.icio.us    reddit