What is it with West Coast Hardcore? Just like Ceremony before them, Trash Talk's set opening for Mellowhype was more like an aerobics convention than anything human: Stand up, sit down, smoke weed, make a mosh pit, now a circle put. Lee Spielman missed his calling, he should have been Sergeant is the US Marines because you sure haven't lived till you've seen a floor filled with hardcore fanatics stop moshing and sit on the floor, it is like a flash mob of wild kids playing Simon Says.
And Trash Talks twenty minute set is the highlight of the "Trash Wang" Show though nobody embarrassed themselves at all. Opening was a hip hop collective from Queens, Children Of The Night, a smart buncha kids who rapped against some hard hard beats old school and made some new friends for sure. They were followed by hip hop DJ (and Syd The Kid's kid brother) Taco Bennett, who is, like everybody else not in Trash Talk, very young, eighteen years old, and dances round the stage like the mad man and seems genuinely thrilled to be there while throwing down smack like "Clique".
Trash Talk didn't dance but they jumped very high and very often, both Garrett Stevenson on guitar and bassist Spencer Pollard are energizer bunnies on the heels of their feet throughout the all too brief set and Sam Bossons drums, he is always ahead of the bass (in a funk reversal), because Lee is such a wild MC. With his long wirey hair and his constant patter ("You stole my shoe, man? I caught you) between full speed jumps off the stage and into the audience. A punk dirge "Hash Wednesday" is saved by Lee's amusing patter. A one two "Fuck Wit My Shit" and "Sacramento Is Dead" were the highlight of the night.
And Trash talk probably should have gone on last. Mellowhpe, aka Odd Future members Hodgy Beats and Left Brain, are not the hellraisers Odd Future are. Indeed, their current album is an unsually serious look at life for these 31 year old men (one of whom has a son). I wasn't crazy about Numbers at first, but listening to it live I change my mind. Hodgy Beats is a great dancer and he moves across the stage with a strange grace and Two Brains has a gruff friendliness, high fiving his "niggaz' , whether they be black or white, male or female, all represented in the audience and all 35 youngers than I am.
Sometimes the set needed a blast of energy but not often enough to matter, and a couple of songs off the album, "Untitled L" and "La Bonita" really shined on stage. There didn't appear to be any setlist and responded to a request for "65" by rapping it. "Leflair" is a magical singalong and to be quite honest, it was a consistently powerful set. If the urge was to prove they were a duo to be reckoned with either with or without the rest of Odd Future. Domo Genesis joined them but only to dance. Dancing is cool.
Grade: A-