Waking up this morning my first thought was, “why is my neck soo freakin sore?” Did I eat pussy last night? No. Did I get put in a deadly sleeper hold? Maybe. Was I looking to the sky for something? Its a bird, its a plane, its SHINOBI NINJA!!
As the last stop on their east coast tour, before heading back to CMJ in NYC, Wilmington, NC was graced with punk rockin, hip hoppin Shinobi Ninja. Personally, I couldn’t have been more thrilled, as I have been attempting (and failing) to share the unique, edgy, and amazing sound with anyone who would listen. Assuring them, yes there are other types of new, great music besides this electronic wave sweeping the nation.
My failure was evident as we were far from filling up the house; those in attendance, however, got their faces rocked, heads banged, and like myself, a next-day sore neck.
“Brooklyn to Babylon” instantly had everyone under the Shinobi trance. And as I previous wrote in a review, the magical space between the crowd and the front of the stage, slowly but surely got smaller and smaller until, poof! it was gone. Next thing i knew, my friend Sarah K was dancing with Baby G and DA onstage, it was majestic. I tried to snap some pics of the onstage fiesta, but with great energy, comes great responsibility, and these cats onstage wouldn’t sit still for more than .02 seconds, therefor all my pictures are blurry. With the deadly combination of Maniac Mike jumping around and shreddin his guitar behind his head and what not, the heavy hitting Terminator Dave on the drums, (who actually snapped his stainless steel bass drum pedal in half the night before; yes snapped it in half yo,) and w/ the 1,2 punch of Baby G and DA as the front people, these guys have upped there on stage performance, and even for a far from sold out show, they brought it like this was the last rock show before the Armageddon of 2012.
The entire crowd demanded “One more song, One more song!” so they came back and happily gave us one more. So why go somewhere to see a great show, when you can just get the great show to come to your little town of Wilmington. And luckily they are coming back October 26th to Kefi’s playing w/ The Movement, can’t wait y’all.
But for me, there IS more to music than great, even super human onstage shows, its about the people. Every single member of Shinobi is straight up, down with all people. All around just stand- up, great kids, they instantly befriended anyone and everyone who was hanging around after the show, and (like every band should) honestly cares about their fans. This kind of relationship is very rare, I’ve spent the last year going to as many shows as humanly possible, going back stage, meeting and interviewing bands, and none have come close to the degree of love Shinobi has shown.
I have said it once, I’ll say it again, Shinobi Ninja is right on the cusp of something monumental, whatever IT is, they got IT. If you can check out their CMJ performance at Sullivan Hall on Oct 22nd, do it! I can guarantee an awesomely bad-ass rocking show.