4-20 LA, Knowmads, Chev and Superfire at the Vera Project

The Knowmads are one of my favorite local hip hop outfits, so when I saw they had a show coming up on short notice I volunteered. Short notice shows can be short of volunteers, and the Knowmads shows have a reputation for bringing large crowds that like to party, making security a challenge, so they could probably use me.
It turns out I was right: I was the only security volunteer. It also turns out the show was on 4-20, which I had failed to notice when I signed up. Looks like I was going to be Major Killjoy, running around telling everyone to put it out. On the other hand, I know the dudes in the Knowmads - they gave me my first interview - and they're smart and great at communicating.
I checked in with Tom Pepe and told him what was up and he offered to give us a PSA: It worked perfectly - nobody lit up in the venue at all, and working security was a pleasure. Major props to the Knowmads and Tom Pepe for guiding the crowd and giving them a great show! I got some good footage of Superfire with Rebel: SuperFire also had one number with an electric guitar: I like the sound he gets; they don't integrate the guitar into the music, rather they highlight the guitar for a bit then move back to the hip hop. Interesting, I really don't see too much live guitar at hip hop performances, although the Thermals provided a great power trio backup for some spitting at the 2011 Sasquatch Line-up announcement party. The linked blog post has a photo of the Thermals providing the groove (guitar, bass and drums) for assorted members of Das Racist and Mad Rad as they free styled, I really liked that example.
I got Saturdayzed from a hand held video recorder in the crowd while working security: ...but I mostly wasn't able to film from the crowd, I was too busy working security. I put the other camera on a tripod and turned it on when the show started, then didn't get back to it for quite a while. The result is that I ended up with a 53 minute video here that I haven't sorted out, I think it starts with Chev and then the Knowmads. I wasn't sure if YouTube took videos this long but it appears to have worked fine. I think this has the rest of the Knowmads show and then LA in a single video: I enjoyed the show, the Knowmads have several old favorites like the Boat Can Leave Now and Wildflower (this one is from the 2011 Japan benefit show; if you poke around on my YouTube channel I think I have 3 versions each of Wildflower and The Boat Can Leave Now, maybe 4 if you look hard enough) ...and Saturdayzed that I always enjoy hearing, and the new Knewbook material is growing on me - a couple more shows and the new album will be old favorites too.
The Knowmads paid for some of the costs of producing their new release the Knewbook (available for $10 on bandcamp) with a kickstarter campaign, and several of the contributors got "hang out with the band in the green room" privileges at the Vera Show and shout outs from the stage and so on which was interesting to see. The financial and marketing models used in the music industry are changing and bands like the Knowmads could make plenty of money off of purely virtual (downloaded) copies of their work without a sniff of a record company involved in the financing or delivery of their music. Not bad for a couple of 21 year old north Seattle kids, I hope they sell lots of copies of it! Their earlier "Bus Station" mix tape with 24 tracks is available free here last time I looked too, it's worth checking out!

January Open Mic at the Vera Project

I caught some interesting performances at the Vera at this week's open Mic.
First up was Mosaic, he has a bit to say in his intro then the music starts about :57 in:

Nicely done, for his first live performance he's quite polished.


Next up was Gabriel, another member of Outside In.

He did a nice spoken word piece.


The final Outside In artist did an old classic a capella, takes some guts and ego to tackle a classic all alone like this:


Next up was Julia doing some autobiographical "fiction."

I'm next, telling a story about wiring the Neptune.

Next up the MC reads some of his own poetry off of his smart phone.

Next a hip hop trio or maybe a quartet took the stage. They have a gig on February 3 at Neumos with Scribes, should be a good show. They're called Some Fresh if I heard them right, and they have a mix tape coming out in the next couple of weeks.

The last performance was by the 4th member of the prior act, he does a song a capella to wrap things up.

Japan Benefit With Knowmads, Real Rogers and Friends at the Vera Project

I steered the Japan benefit show at the Vera, putting my 13 year old son and his 3 buddies along with 6 or 7 other volunteers to work running a hip hop show.

The headliners were the Knowmads, and the previous Knowmads show was somewhat controversial. The Vera is an all ages venue, and the sold out mostly white North end and East side hip hop crowd loves it's booze and weed. We had 3 pukes in the venue to deal with (they probably binged on the booze before coming in), I confiscated some booze from an audience member, and any number of bozos felt compelled to light up joints or pipes or whatever pot smoking devices they smuggled in.

We run an all ages venue partially on the basis of being drug and alcohol free, so the controversy is real and important. We bring youth into the venue, and their parents are OK with them being at our shows because we won't expose them to pot smoke and drunken boorish adult behavior, so attention must be paid to living up to our end of the bargain for all shows.

For this show we brought on a crew of 3 paid security staff, along with the regular front door security checking bags, packs and pockets (we don't normally check pockets), and 3 additional volunteer (unpaid) security staff. We put 3 into concessions, a couple of people selling tickets at the front door, and opened the venue up to the crowd.

We got a reasonable crowd, close to the 140 we hope to average but not sold out. One thing I love about the hip hop shows: the crowd gets up close to the performers, crowding up around the stage. The energy level goes way up and the performers thrive on it, giving better performances, which inspires the crowd to amp up the energy in a joyous sweaty dancing feedback loop.

The security was overkill and we didn't get any pukers, so it was a much nicer as far as that goes.

This is probably the best video footage I've ever seen from my Flip camera, the volunteer videographer got right up front and made an intimate fun video of the performance, here's Knowmad's "The Boat Can Leave Now," my current favorite clip:

Better yet, if you got the fat internet pipes play the HD version:

I did a terrible job of keeping track of who performed at the show. There was an earlier act with a man and a woman vocalist that I liked, but I didn't catch the performer's names, here are photos of them:



Rawlo was one of 3 or 4 acts listed ahead of time, so perhaps one of these is Rawlo.
We had short sets from several performers including K $neaky here:

Warm Gun did a short set with some nice numbers:

Warm Gun also played some guitar, I managed to miss it but the photographer didn't:



I think these 2 might have been the last act that performed after Knowmads, but I'm not sure:



Based on the chant it sounds like G-lite, he has some nice backing vocals from the woman who sang with an earlier act. He got a bit longer and rocked the Vera out for several good tunes:

Real Rogers and (from the chant) ICMB (?) did a great set, keeping the crowd jumping and dancing and yelling and waving those arms:

Next up were the headlining Knowmads


Knowmads performed a great set, I already included What We Do To Survive earlier, here's "Wildflower"

Keep 'em High was another standout track:

Good group dynamics, fast and disciplined multi-person rapping, good rhythms and intricate switching and combining of vocals, with some pounding climaxes - very nice stuff, I love me some bouncing around to a good Knowmads show, wearing my arms out lifting them over my head, and sweating through my clothes as I grin like a happy idiot at all the happy people bouncing around me.

P.S. The Vera Videographer was also the Photographer, I simply have to track down her name so I can give her the credit she is due. She gave me her e-mail address but I promptly lost it. Doh! Gonna have to track back through the volunteer sign up sheet next time I'm at the Vera, I suppose. The pictures were taken with my cheap digital camera (not even an SLR) and they were pretty blurry - fast action, weak flash and slow camera combine to mke it difficult to avoid the blurring. In many cases the blurring gave the picture an interesting dynamic quality, and I;ve included a few in this blog post.

Given the number of unknown performers, in general comment away if you know who somebody is or what song is being performed.

...and as always, comment for any reason you like, I always feel flattered whenever somebody comments.