Friday, December 2, 2011

The Beginning of Summer and Chali 2na



Now that summer is here so is the time to bring out those albums that just scream summer album, stuff like Crazy For You by Best Coast last year. Yesterday was a perfect start to the summer and with it I spent the morning listening to fun summer albums. It started with Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

During this I even went into Rough Peel music to check out the David Dallas pop up store, now regular readers of this know I'm a fan of his music and of how hes going about it. Releasing the album for free was a smart move and this pop up store move has been smart also, its been very popular in Auckland and for one day in Wellington it worked with him being in store all day selling his merchandise.

Next album was Surfer Blood Astrocoast, it had been some time since I had last listened to it, but the first three tracks of the album (particularly Swim) really gets you into the mood for the rest of the album. Following this I listened to a couple of albums I really enjoyed from this year Toro Y Moi Underneath The Pine and Washed Outs Within and Without. Both pretty nice albums Washed Outs chill sound made it nice to enjoy in the sun.

Chali 2na

So I'm not really a fan of Chali not cause I think his music sucks but because I've never bothered to listen to it. I do dig some Jurassic 5 stuff but not nearly a big enough fan to even consider paying money to see this and the only reason I was there was the free ticket I won. Chali came out with a three piece band which was nice performing stuff off his solo albums and the crowd was definitely into it.

He did a lot of talking throughout the show first asking "who likes good music?" then "who likes hip hop?" and finally "who likes the music on the radio?" The first two questions got positive responses while the third fell to silence and lead Chali to proclaim tonight he would be his own radio station playing all the music you wanna hear. It was a nice touch but really it was annoying that he drove it down our throat the whole night about "his" radio station cause really we know it isn't an actually one.

We got some nice Jurassic 5 songs that the crowd really got into and enjoyed and Chali without a doubt looked humbled by the response he was getting at times from the crowd because they were into it from the start till well near the end. This was because he chose to give the backing band a chance to shine with solo's and it was painful to say the least. It wasn't like we didn't want to hear it but the length of the solos were so long and painful the bassist playing a bit of Come Together from The Beatles was nice and then the drummer showed himself off and I really wanted to leave. However once the keyboardist who was easily the most talented of the bunch (very nice Jackson 5 song sung by himself) started his solo it was time to leave as at about 2 hours the gig was essentially over anyway.

I enjoyed it to an extent, it was nice to see a hip hop artist play for longer than an hour but at times there was so much filler that it would've been nice to see an hour of him perform without the unnecessary stuff. It was a shame walking out knowing it was still going on and seeing the balcony was full of people, unless they got in for free also I would kind of feel disappointed by it all.

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