Homegrown Hip Hop Fest at Memorial Union, Naomi Klein at Humanities Building, and My Brightest Diamond at Orpheum Stage Door
Andreas Larsson
Kid Sister brought the mostly earnest Homegrown Fest to a flashy end.
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Homegrown Hip Hop Fest At Memorial Union Great Hall
Homegrown Hip Hop Fest at the Union’s Great Hall kicked off Thursday with a showing from the Twin Cities’ menagerie of freakish rap talent, who tented up and delivered a free four-ring circus sans clowns. Muja Messiah came through loud and crisp in a fitted cap over a fresh white towel. Like I Self Divine would later, Messiah displayed a satisfying mash of gangsta and revolutionary, emoting all over the stage: “If you ain’t fresh you better get fresh.”
Homegrown Hip Hop Fest at the Union’s Great Hall kicked off Thursday with a showing from the Twin Cities’ menagerie of freakish rap talent, who tented up and delivered a free four-ring circus sans clowns. Muja Messiah came through loud and crisp in a fitted cap over a fresh white towel. Like I Self Divine would later, Messiah displayed a satisfying mash of gangsta and revolutionary, emoting all over the stage: “If you ain’t fresh you better get fresh.”
MC/producer/DJ Brandon Allday and his brother Medium Zach of Big Quarters then showcased some tricks to rouse a sleepy crowd: A group picture up front to “memorialize” the occasion got everyone close right away, and the two freestyled about objects held up by audience members (including lighters, phones, and markers).
The black-clad I Self Divine swaggered into his set like a rotund Johnny Cash, complete with a red- and black-checkered scarf. But the crowd didn’t really get loud until collective Doomtree arrived to top the night. Each of the six members present showed a signature visual and artistic style—from Cecil Otter in a classy lid kicking an everyman story vibe, to Dessa’s bohemian chic to P.O.S.’ bespectacled punk charm and booming vocals. Their pal Mike Mictlan lost momentum when he had to switch from a dead mic to live one just as the soundman adjusted the levels for the passed mic; the bewildered MC had to repeat the process again. Later in the set, P.O.S., large both in stature and voice, started doing a bad robot dance, then shrugged and abandoned it. (Trust us, it’s part of the appeal.)
Despite those flubs, the beats were playfully menacing and raucous, snapping with funk thickness and a rock-guitar crunch. At their best, free-form flourishes came center stage, as when P.O.S. and the guys (the “Rockettes”) crooned a hook for Dessa.
Departed native son El Guante and his associate See More Perspective opened and closed their combined set on Saturday night with spoken-word workouts (literally) yelled to the back rows. Dressed in layers of black, the two stomped through murky beats and political dirges.
El Guante’s parting challenge—“Would you rather hear the beats or strive ’til you get free?”—was all but forgotten when duo Yea Big And Kid Static switched the mood to high-energy cheekiness. Yea Big rocked the gym-class look, complete with knee-high socks, track shorts, and sweat stains. Kid Static handled most of the verses in sunglasses. Ironic touches like shaking asses to chants that “The future’s looking grim!” kept things from getting mindless, even when Static rhymed “Deal Or No Deal” with “Happy Meal.”
Two dancers dressed like funky future Teletubbies joined headliner Kid Sister for her set, encouraging audience members to lose their minds and bodies to the beat. The vocals were doomed by faulty acoustics, but the thump and skitter of DJ Gant-Man kept things moving well past the midnight hour. Kid Sister is not much for banter but, heard or not, she made an effective ringleader for the swaying masses. As Gant-Man shouted at the end of the set: “It’s a Chicago thang, mama!”
Naomi Klein at UW Humanities Building
Naomi Klein, author of the anti-corporate globalization landmark No Logo, and more recently The Shock Doctrine: The Rise and Fall of Disaster Capitalism, somehow found her way through the seven-floor labyrinth that is the Mosse Humanities Building on Friday to speak in a packed lecture hall. A mass of young Prog-bloggers, 50-something Cosby-sweater activists, and elderly leftists arrived basking in the post-election glow that's been sweeping the liberal majority over the past few days. They met with a speech designed to follow Barack Obama's victory with a challenging punch in the stomach, as the skeptical Canadian writer asked her audience: "What can we do with this moment?"
Naomi Klein, author of the anti-corporate globalization landmark No Logo, and more recently The Shock Doctrine: The Rise and Fall of Disaster Capitalism, somehow found her way through the seven-floor labyrinth that is the Mosse Humanities Building on Friday to speak in a packed lecture hall. A mass of young Prog-bloggers, 50-something Cosby-sweater activists, and elderly leftists arrived basking in the post-election glow that's been sweeping the liberal majority over the past few days. They met with a speech designed to follow Barack Obama's victory with a challenging punch in the stomach, as the skeptical Canadian writer asked her audience: "What can we do with this moment?"
"The deep divisions of our culture, particularly of wealth and class, still exist," Klein insisted, as she fumbled with a broken clip-on microphone. She focused largely on the global economic crisis, taking shots at laissez-faire capitalism and criticizing Obama's rumored front-runner for U.S. Secretary Of The Treasury, Larry Summers. Calling the rumor a "hope hangover," Klein drew ties between Summers' push for large-firm privatization of Yeltsin-era Russia and the rise of Vladimir Putin in the wake of its failure. She followed that up with a detailed commentary on the three most common ways a country will respond to shock in the wake of a crisis: regression, relaxation, or maturation. Klein suggested using historical facts to fight the amnesia of shock, and emphasized the bi-partisan responsibility for the economic meltdown, claiming that the roots "run deeper than the last eight years."
Further daring the crowd to hang onto its euphoria, Klein criticized Obama's $150 billion energy proposal, as well as his proposed policies on the Iraq war, calling for an Iraq pullout and a greater focus on alternative energy. Finally, Klein urged her audience to unite and put pressure on the president-elect to make extreme changes, concluding that in the wake of our economic crisis, "We can regress or we can grow up, and it's time to grow up."
My Brightest Diamond and Clare And The Reasons at Orpheum Stage Door
My Brightest Diamond leader Shara Worden and Clare Muldaur of opening band Clare And The Reasons shared a three-piece backing group at the Orpheum Stage Door on Saturday, which helped give both sets a wink of theatricality. Cellist Maria Jeffers, Madison-bred viola player Marla Hansen (who also played an opening set), and multi-instrumentalist Olivier Manchon helped Worden close her set with a lovely shadow-puppet show. Earlier, they donned headband-mounted lights for part of Clare’s. After all, both bands make music that demands to be acted out.
My Brightest Diamond leader Shara Worden and Clare Muldaur of opening band Clare And The Reasons shared a three-piece backing group at the Orpheum Stage Door on Saturday, which helped give both sets a wink of theatricality. Cellist Maria Jeffers, Madison-bred viola player Marla Hansen (who also played an opening set), and multi-instrumentalist Olivier Manchon helped Worden close her set with a lovely shadow-puppet show. Earlier, they donned headband-mounted lights for part of Clare’s. After all, both bands make music that demands to be acted out.
At her best, Worden brings her maudlin chamber-pop songs alive the way an adorable, if slightly creepy, little kid might bring alive a pop-up storybook. Muldaur swoons and pouts her way through tunes that recall a 1940s movie romance, brushed with jazzy chord progressions. (That’s easy to notice even before you realize she titled her 2007 album The Movie.) Muldaur even managed to coax a typically reserved Madison crowd out of their seats. “It’s like there’s a swimming pool here,” she said of the gap in front of the stage, and just about everyone immediately accepted her invitation to come swimming.
What wasn’t good for the night’s whimsical, theatrical air? Some shit-faced girl who kept yelling all through My Brightest Diamond’s set, often during the quieter parts of songs: “I love My Brightest Diamond I've seen them many times!,” “You're the most talented singer of 2008!,” and so on. During the encore, the whole crowd began shushing her, so she yelled to the band “They want you to shut the fuck up; I don't know why!” (That’s probably not verbatim, since drunk-moron talk is never too clear.)
The other nice thing about the small backing group, though, was how it evened out some of the differences in Worden’s material. Opener “Golden Star” is a luxuriously dark highlight from 2006’s Bring Me The Workhorse, but here, the strings came on creaky and jittery, making it sound at home next to the more disjointed songs of this year’s A Thousand Sharks’s Teeth. Worden broke out a kalimba on “Apples,” a Teeth song that’s creaky and jittery in the first place. It sounds cool, but it’s not a complete, stunning pop tune like Workhorse’s “Dragonfly.” Even if some of her songs aren’t nearly as good as others, Worden’s operatic delivery and the band’s resourceful arrangements made all of them a little more tempting.
