Did you ever see the Woody Allen movie, "Stardust Memories", where all the cool people are on the cool train, and Woody is on the uncool one heading in the opposite direction? That's exactly what the dreary, uncool "Rock The Bells" felt like on Sunday, September 2nd. at PNC Bank Arts Center, an amphitheater much worse than even that name suggests. All the cool people were rockin' in the free world with Jigga and Pearl Jam, and the losers were here, with a glazed look on our faces, getting rained on and watching Curren$y's uninspired set.
The two day "Rock The Bells" hip hop fest was a huge boring mistake. A long list of second tier artists pretending to be superstars. Saturday was not great, but really, DMX was the headliner. DMX couldn't headline BB Kings. Sunday peaked higher, with Nas, but how could you promote a $200 cheap tix two day fest on Nas's back? The answer is you couldn't, and leading up to Labor Day Weekend I was inundated with twofer and Groupon offers as they tried to unload tix for the unseemly accident. In an act of bewildering masochism, "Rock The Bells" sold no single day tix except for "Day Of". It was rainy on Sunday and they got zero traction from walk by (well drive by -it is in the middle of nowhere).
My nephew Jeff McColl is something of a hip hop head and we are both Slaughterhouse fans, so I bought two mid-price Loge tix, and essentially took fifty dollars outside and shot it in the head since tix sales were so few, they opened up the cheaper Lawn tix and my upgrade was pointless.
Really, everything about the "Rock The Bells" experience was second rate. The car park is a 15 minute hike to the Center with rub your face in it placards saying, "If you had gone VIP you could have parked here". The break between sets were an interminable 30 minutes so, you could, in theory, hit the "Paid Dues" Stage. But why would you do that and a) lose your seat to b) see people you have never heard of before? So nobody bothered. All the decent food places were closed so we got 2 cheeseburgers, a coke, a fries and a beer for $40 and got a seat for the main stage in time to hear the super rap group Deltron 3030, with a full orchestra, kill it KILL IT, on "Clint Eastwood". Deltron 3030 were on the Gorillaz original and they were superb with the violins whining fascinatingly in the background.
Little did I know they were going to be the highlight of the truncated evening.
Half an hour later, Curren$y took the stage. I have no kick against the New Orleans rapper, though I seldom think of him at all. Woody Fuller wrote a terrific live review here a couple of years ago, and though Jeff loathed him, all I felt was that he was tremendously boring but not without his pleasures. His "Lifestyle" rap was drowned by mass indifference, the sound was naff, during the a-capella portion the raps got completely lost and the entire set failed to ignite.
The Slaughterhouse set didn't ignite either. Though that one should have. The sound system didn't help. Neither did the rainstorm that found a mass exodus from the lawn to the loge. But neither uber-fan Jeff nor I were feeling it. Slaughterhouse were four also ran rappers who came together for a well received eponymous debut album which also went nowhere. Then Eminem got interested, recorded with Royce da as Bad Meets EVil and Slaughterhouse first album for Shady Records, Welcome To The House, was released last Tuesday. The crew claim it may be # 1 next week and I hope it is, Welcome To The House, is one of the better hip hop albums this year, Four great rappers, all at the peak of their careers. Especially good is Joelle Ortiz, who Jeff compares to Big Pun.
The set had its moments. A devastating mid-set "Hammer Dance" is bracketed by "Sound Off" and "Microphone". "Sound Off" is a sprawl of a song with the rappers trading versus in concentric circles, spitting over and under each other with a vicious hardness. A bravado better than the recorded version, the count off so fast I thought Twister had taken off. Indeed, everything here is better than on record, they are born to seen live and if they play locally I will absolutely catch em in a club. But at "Rock The Bells" my pleasure was anything but visceral, I had to imagine myself somewhere I wasn't being shoved, hassled and rained on.
Then, it would be another half hour before Common who is terrible, and two before J Cole, who I also didn't want to see that much. And three and a half hours before Nas who, sure I like, but not that much.
So we hit the road and got soaked for our troubles, missing Lauryn Hill joining Nas. A trade I'll take any day.
A strange experience where all three performers were pretty good but everything about the afternoon was rotten… I once spent a year in New Jersey one day.
Grade: C
