Anyway, Scribble Jam '04 was a good time. As you can see above (and in Monday's Columbus Dispatch), 18 year-old Illmaculate from Portland, OR, who lost his job to come to the fest, won the MC battle over past champion Mac Lethal. The battle wasn't super-stupendous, as alot of mediocre MCs were able to win a round or two. The aforementioned White Mike was pretty awful, luckily Illmaculate served him up nice. Deuce Leader, courtesy of his now-infamous stage-dive (he weighs at least a good 250) during last year's freestyle battle, was name-dropped in about every freestyle. Also, as noted by one of the hosts of the battle, there were an obscene amount of gay jokes in the freestyles. I'm sure most of those guys aren't homophobic, but the tolerance of such lyrics in hip-hop today definitely limits its appeal to an outside audience. The rock-centric Other Paper review of Ghostface's set at the Projekt Revolution tour this year comes to mind. But any battle where a Nintendo Power Glove is mentioned as a sexual aide is OK by me.
None of the other battles really caught my attention, though the guy that chopped the intro to a Parliament song into the melody of Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall Part 2" in the DJ battle was pretty sweet. There were lots of good live shows. The back-to-back QN5/Cunninlynguists sets Saturday night were rather stout, though I would definitely give the upper hand to those Cunnin folks. I guess it's mainly because all of them were there, and they performed alot of my favorite songs from the two albums, including the namesake of this blog. The QN5 set only featured half of EFamm (Pack FM & Tonedeff) plus Mr. Mecca, so it was lots of new stuff from upcoming solo albums, and not familiar bangers. Still good though, even with crazy drunken appearances from folks like Poison Pen, who might be ODB 2K4. Wordsworth, of Lyricist Lounge (both the Mtv show and the albums) fame, performed a set Friday night and also appeared with QN5 Saturday night, and was definitely a fine live performer. Look out for his album on September 14th. Little Brother was good on Friday night, as were hometown heroes Blueprint & Illogic, who did alot of my favorites of theirs, like "My Favorite Things," "Break Bread," and "Inhale." Living Legends were last Friday night, and some of them got pretty pissed when the sound was turned off around 2:30. Oh well, it was dope either way. There were other good live shows (and Beans', who had the benefit of awful sound, which did not help his odd, CD-player powered live show), but the Rhymesayers sets were nothing new and there was just too much hip-hop to write about here. I think Andy estimated that we spent about 19 hours at Annie's over the two days. Whatever, it was cool to hang out with Dave (and Andy), and I think all had a good time. Scribble 2005, here we come (look out wallet)!!!
Before I forget, I also saw a quality show on Thursday night, that being Elefant, VHS or Beta, and The Everyones at Little Brothers. Well, the Everyones from Australia were pretty bad: with their generic poploudrock, incessant & unnecessary falsetto, and the least-rockin' flute ever, I dubbed them many things, including "The Ballsweat-o's" and "Wolfgang Amadingo Crapzart." At least it was good to laugh at. After another epic soundcheck, VHS or Beta rocked a fine set of danced-out new wave. As I said a few times, the jump from their last album to the stuff they're doing now is like going from 1978 to 1982. Along with that, there is also the slightly off-putting aspect of their shows, which is their refusal to play anything but stuff from the upcoming new album. It's not like they have a huge back catalog, but one lengthy disco jam from "Le Funk" would have made my day. After them, Elefant rocked pretty hard, in a new wave-y sorta way. They actually reminded me of the Psychedelic Furs on a handful of songs. And the drummer mooned the audience. All in all, all of us (Ashley, Katie, Franz, Kehn, and myself) seemed to have a good time.
Well alright. Back up to speed. Not huge rock plans coming up, though there may be a small Mannhaus party Friday night and I want to see my co-workers' Latin band on Saturday. And there's always Tuesday at the Ravari. Look out for some sort of music reviews, including vinyl and all that crap I bought at Scribble. If only I could sell folks on the awesomeness of this blog like that guy sold the multi-platinum-ness of the Hangar 18 album I was forced to purchase.
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