02/11/2002 @ the Metro
Wicked Beat Sound System
Erratic
dj Crucial
Jeff Dred
(,checking out night of 100% Sydney music.)
getting there
dazed and confused, i thought ben missed the train and harassed his family about it on the phone. then a found a copy of Girlfriend magazine on the train, and that calmed me down a bit. i normally prefer Clio or B, but that'd have to do.
JEFF DRED
i suppose Jeff was probably better known than Erratic, but it's good that he got bumped earlier. his set was deeply dipped into the Jarmerican vibe. very dub, not very reggae, turntables and percussion, they had this guy with this wicked outfit topped of with the dopest hat. there were some funky moments, but they weren't really bringing it on. i was nodding along like a try hard, but ben was too cool to get into that.
DJ CURCIAL D
more of the same. we entertained ourselves with the usual concert games of "Spotting the coolest Chick", and "Who's a Terrorist?". ben showed off his relatively vast knowledge of alcoholic drinks. i thought about chatting up 40 year olds...
ERRATIC
being the true pioneers that we are, we were going to get down on the dance floor to Erratic, even if we were the only ones there. luckily for us, other pioneers got there before, so we didn't feel so freaky. but we still felt pretty freaky, considering we're like the youngest suburban kids there trying to look cool on the dance floor.
Erratic was ill. electric bass, electric guitar, drum kit, technologies, and bongos! as was last time, they came out pounding. we spotted a very cool girl, or as ben would have you believe, a very crazy, whacked out girl. i say she was too cool...
WICKED BEAT SOUND SYSTEM
before they started, i had a peek at their setlist. and their equipment. wanted to steal some of it. they had glow in the dark audio cables! how can you not be amazed?!!
as their name suggests, they were indeed, rather wicked. turntables, drums, electric bass, technologies, keyboards, bongos, tablas, sound effects machines, and one of those toy keyboards that you have to blow thru to make sounds. plus three different singers. (i swear, i saw one of the band members through out the whole night, just wandering around. he was messing with my head.)
one thing i really love about wbss, was their ability to twist their songs around live, so it doesn't sound like it does on the record, but still sound very good. there were so many changes going on, ben reckoned he saw the singer having to check out cue cards for where the songs are going next. or maybe she forgot her own lyrics. she does drop in some new lines that weren't on the album, so, that's possible.
it was excellent. they wandered around thru several styles, reggae, drum'n bass, 2 step, house, soul, funk, hip-hop, and they came back to the encore with a rather pounding, rocking jam.
going home
we missed the train and got stuck in a time warp at townhall. its almost as if the train just kept moving back and forth somewhere down the line. but on the plus side, i scored myself a helium balloon.
great times, fellow dancer, great times.
back