Tricky takes Charlotte

Since this blog is a Charlotte to DC thing, I figured it'd be cool if I started with the one of the things Charlotte needs the most.  That would be a string of successful LIVE SHOWS!  If the show Jamez and I went to on 3/9 was a testament to what is to come, then we're in for a great year.  Halleluyah!  Enough with the incantations.  

Tricky made an appearance here in our small sleepy little town earlier this week, and put on a great performance.  He played at the Neighborhood Theater.  It started out on some classic Tricky shit.  The band exited from some mysterious back room behind the stage and the lights went all purple.  Just when I started to question whether someone slipped some acid into the bowl of cereal I ate before I got there, Tricky comes strolling out with his hair still fucked up from the last time I saw a picture of him (that boy needs a barber BADLY).  I didn't get to take any great pictures, because as soon as I started clicking, some short stocky white man approached me and told me I couldn't use flash. Not only couldn't I have used flash, but I had to cease with my image capturing by the end of the 1st song (which Tricky was already 3/4 of the way thru!). What this means is that you won't get a chance to look at whatever the hell "J-Bone" and I witnessed. What we witnessed was a great show.

It was at that precise moment that two strange white women approached me and asked me to take their picture.  Now, I'm no dick, and if someone wants me to take their picture, I'll happily oblige them 95% of the time.  The strange thing was, they wanted me to take their picture with MY camera! Okay, where is this going? Nowhere because they disappeared shortly after that.  Maybe they were just figments of my camera's imagination?  Whatever they were, the encounter left me scratching my head a bit.  As long as they had fun I suppose.  

The band consisted of Trick himself, a female I didn't recognize who sang with him, bass player, drummer, lead guitar, and a keyboard cat whom from our vantage point we could not see (but we HEARD his ass).  The drummer started in playing a slow, hard beat, to which the keyboard cat then added some mind numbing chords.  Tricky stood with his back to the crowd smoking a blunt for the first 9 minutes of the show.  All good even if he's a non-sharing mf (hate, hate hate!).  

The show lasted about 2 hours total, and Tricky went on a pretty thorough journey playing old shit from the late 1990's all the way to the present.  I don't know song titles, I just know what beats I like from that cat.  Never was a straight on Tricky fan, but the dude is a serious producer, and after this last show, that has changed.  His music is certainly worth remembering.