Home  Reviews Sankofa on Sankofa - 11/16/05- Bottom's Up, Fort Wayne, IN
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Sankofa on Sankofa - 11/16/05- Bottom's Up, Fort Wayne, IN |
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Written by Drew
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Thursday, 17 November 2005 |
Sankofa sent over his account of last nights gig at Bottom's Up. If you're into rap or hip-hop, Sankofa would be worth checking out.
To get hip with Fort Wayne's other scene, read on... Firstly, thanks to Matt Jericho for hooking up the gig. I followed his advice and handed Javier the soundman a copy of Still Means Something, assuring him that if he were to find it distasteful, the earthtones in the layout make for great coaster material but-if his drinks were to be offended-the CD case would make for a great throwing star.
Secondly, thanks to Jenn (glad you could get off work in time), Stucky, PremiseONE and Tony2Tone (imma make those shirts if you guys don't get a move on), RhymeWise37 (the brains behind the proposed shirt design, though I'll never admit it in a court of law), Glide, Pringlz, Evil Lynn, and Rocky Dennis for showing up to support. According to Jericho, the bartender (who looked uncannily like Ken Wahl's lifeline operator in Wiseguy) said the people who came in to support tipped the best of any crowd (on a percentage basis) to which I say "good stuff." It looks like there might be a chance for a Weds hip hop night to go down there in December.
My setlist looked a little like this (hit it):
-An LLC beatjack for an intro
-They All Die
-Burn Unit
-breakneck
-Perpetual Motion Machine
-Wu Tang beat jack
-99 Goggles
-A Handful of Words
Seeing as it was PunkRockNight, I wanted to make sure I had a set full of high-energy tracks and said list (penned in record short time at a Brass Rail booth while sitting across from Jenn and Jericho) fit the bill. Outside of needing to restart Burn Unit as I'd not mixed the instrumental high enough, I'd say the set went pretty damn well. As is par for the course, I found something to climb on (this time, a chair). It was during my Wu Tang beatjack with my Free Milk verse that I bumped my head on the rolled up projector screen and lost my spot. I figured "screw it" and started freestyling, only to remember almost too late that I was supposed to use that time to catch my breath and get a drink.
I toyed around with dynamics this time around, adjusting the volume of my voice and I liked the results. The sound system was crisp and didn't feedback once (if you were there and heard feedback, it was from the LLC recording). Glide, Pringlz and Evil Lynn got to working the floor once breakneck started playing and it felt damn good to have them moving along as I rapped. During the second verse of 99 Goggles, I switched voices/accents up every two bars and the last verse had me somehow flipping on my long lost Sean Connery accent switch, prompting RhymeWise37 to shout out "Sean Connery's in the house!"
As a performer, I had a 20 buck bar tab and-as I was unable to buy anything for my friends-it went unspent. I was looking forward to getting 20 bucks worth of fries or something, but that JAKE idea passed by the wayside. Two days ago, I had a good feeling about this set and it came to fruition. My hope is that next time there's enough heads up to properly promote the event so more cats can show. There were some old salts at the bar and the guys from Pleasing Melani but, outside of my friends and a few cats working on their pool sharking, the venue was pretty empty. Ah hell, it was after all a Wednesday night.
After my exhausted 'performance' at the Studio13 hosted Listener show, it felt good to come back and rock a show properly.
Again, thanks to all involved.
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