Recap Busdriver at the Bluebird Theater

Busdriver, born Regan Farquhar, is capable of delivering some of the fastest and most complex rhymes ever put to tape; his style has been called absurdist, his lyrical topics ranging from biting social commentary to personal relationships to Dadaist pseudo-nonsense. It’s always weird and usually awesome. Of course, none of that matters if you can’t understand a word he's saying, which was unfortunately the case this past Saturday night at the Bluebird Theater.

The line of opening acts was long and tedious, so by the time Busdriver took the reins—all hipster-nerdy with his cardigan, tight shirt, and Nikes—the excitement was palpable. Here was something different. Here was a man who knew that we, the audience, were going to like what he was about to do. For all his nervous pacing in the crowd during the openers, his presence onstage was confident and dramatic. Actually hearing him, though, was difficult—Busdriver’s voice was loud enough, but muffled and distorted. It’s tough already to comprehend words in his mile-a-minute flow, but the bad sound quality made it harder, even as he delivered simple lines like, “My witty thread bores your kiddie-pool party / this self-absorbed crowd is glum and foolhardy.”

The performance itself, however, was enthralling. Assisted by a mustachioed DJ/guitarist, Busdriver let loose a torrent of insanely paced raps as he flew around the stage and gestured wildly. “The Troglodyte Wins,” the closest Busdriver ever gets to mainstream rap, had everyone in the house bouncing and nodding their heads to its maddeningly catchy “get up / get down” samples. Odds are those are some of the only words the crowd could make out. Busdriver is a clever man, and who knows, maybe it’s all a ploy to sell records. See the show, buy the CD, take it home, pop it in, and go, “Oh, that’s what he was saying!” But, from this side of things, it would have been better to understand him face to face.