De La Soul @ The ShoresComplex, Adelaide (08/05/08)

Sun 10th May, 2009 in Gig Reviews

This tour was all supposed to be a big one. Touted by some as De La Soul’s last tour of Australia (this was quickly dispelled by Trugoy The Dove, who promised they’ll be back again) we were given excuse for excitement. This was also a celebration of their truly seminal celebration of ‘love in hip hop’, 3 Feet High and Rising I also wasn’t sure if we’d get the highly discussed 10 piece live band supporting them, giving us a fully orchestrated Native Tounges hip-hop extravaganza. Alas, this wasn’t to be and we had to make do with Mase behind the boards, occasionally surfacing for his good-tempered rhymes with Trugoy and Posdnuos controlling things with their tricky MC skills. At least we were about to enjoy the original coming of the ‘daisy age’.

It bears explanation that getting to “The Shores Complex” involved an intense battle with the South Australian public transport system, a bunch of other people on the bus who had no ideas where it was and a Polish bus driver determined as all hell to take us to a ‘Caravan Park’ on Military Road. We made it… just, and while my mate had ventured to the Shores once many years ago, for most of the attending few it appears that ‘Shores on a New Years Day’ and other such events had never graced their calendars before. It was a trendy looking crowd without any Gangsta overtones and people seemed to be of all ages, some were from the late teenage set, dome in their early to mid twenties who had liked De La for a long time and those that had been fortunate enough to follow them from their inception with 3 Feet High and Rising (there were a couple of older generations thrown in for good measure too). While this all pointed towards the accessibility, quirkiness and likeability of the band’s early work it set the place up to be slightly emotionally nullified, without the energy and fervour of other less ‘light-hearted’ hip hop shows. In fact all-in-all whether pre-programmed or not, there was a battle waged between De La and the crowd’s slight lack of energy during the entire gig.

It didn’t start that way though. As I arrived Cut Chemist was starting to mash things up on his decks, ripping out some truly wicked song choices that were treated to some fascinating mremixing. Stepping away from his thud-thud bass beats with Jurassic 5 this was a set built for bringing on De La Soul. While the skills of his manoeuvring never looked too apparent, Cut Chemist is a master of the movement of beats and sounds. How he intertwined Eric B and Rakim’s version of Microphone Fiend with the blustery cover by Rage Against The Machine is a mystery. Not so much a mystery as how he could play a tripped up version of Nas’ New York State of Mind next to a near untouched It’s A Man’s World next to some crazy-ass Egyptian traditional music next to the ‘peace and love’ vibe Chase The Devil by Lee Scratch Perry. It’s unusual to try and list tracks from a DJ set but this was a little special, both in song choice and execution. In fact the sound was so smooth the vibe so soulful that De La suffered as a result, coming off as slightly murky and over cooked in their Mcing and overly simple, mixed down backing tracks and beats.

For De La it all started a bit soft, working in some crowd interaction they didn’t really get anywhere until they introduced the 3 Feet anniversary concept and busted out a wicked version of Potholes in My Lawn. It was a wicked way to get the crazy socially conscious yet quirky as you can get metaphorical concepts out there. They were conscious of this being an anniversary gig and almost asked permission to do a suite of songs from De La Soul is Dead which came off, sounding more suitable for the sound at the highly colourful yet low-roofed shores venue than any of the daisy age driven ditties of 3 feet. The gig got all sort of interesting when a special guest was introduced onto stage who had apparently been touring with them the whole time, and who was spending his last day in Australia. Dres or as better known The Black Sheep of the Native Tounges Posse came on with a version of Whodat that rocked. He then got presented with a cake to celebrate the fact that his birthday had fallen on this Adelaide show night. Throughout all of this there were constant interjections, attempts to rile the crowd up, especially through the ‘split them into two sides’ and ‘hands in the air’ methods that did get a bit of action happening but largely failed to maintain itself across the whole gig. The gig was definitely enjoyable, most likely enjoyable beyond its actual quality. It had a bit of the obligatory about it near the end of the night when the crowd was teased into joining the trio plus Dres on stage and slowly but surely did, to be up there for two tunes ending with The Magic Number. If it wasn’t for the surrealistically awesome sound of Cut Chemist buttering me up the wrong way, the new-school gangsta in attitude (not lyrically) style of De La Soul would of worked better. Maybe the 10-piece band they had on the rest of the tour would of done greater justice to the vividly musical early work of this influential hip hop act.

Sorry if my recollections are somewhat unclear. My mind state of the night is perfectly represented by any lack of clarity apparent. I hope De La Soul do come back and bring their fully orchestrated band to Adelaide. We didn’t necessarily prove we deserved it, but De La Soul whilst being a two MC and simple DJ act have some amazing music and some wicked beats behind their at times obtuse, at time brilliant lyrics. There were better times and better ways to see them than what we were given on Friday night. Waiting… most likely in vain.