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RJD2, Starlight Ballroom, Philadelphia, 4/11/07

by The Bridge
04/13/2007

I am thirty years old and I still lie to my mother. That's one of what I suspect is a fairly short list of the things I have in common with RJD2. That is, my age. He may or may not lie to his mother.

Beyond sharing a birth year and being human, it's a safe bet that the only other thing we both have is a vague recollection of a very obnoxious girl shouting rather bizarre words of what one can only assume was supposed to be encouragement towards the end of his set last night. It was around about encore time when the shouting started. It began with the usual 'one more song' and 'woo-hoo'-ing that marks an appreciative audience. But somehow something got lost in the translation from the very obnoxious girl's inebriated brain to her lips, causing her to instruct the band to 'bring the fucking jelly down,' among other things. While it was intended as a statement of enthusiasm and support, it did begin to grate on the nerves. At least, I was dimly aware of people frowning at me after I'd been at it for a while.

So let's get back to lying to my mother for a sec. It's not that I have never told her about my drug use before. I have, over the years, told her about my first time getting really stoned, smoked a cigarette in front of her, and explained the street value of Xanax to her. She knows I'm not a teetotaler, and she respects my ability to make mature, level headed decisions regarding my interactions with intoxicating substances. Mostly because I tell her a lot of lies. Like, I lost my cell phone due to an incident involving poorly designed pockets and no hallucinogens whatsoever. Or the one I will be telling her shortly, when I call and ask her not to read my articles in anymore. I haven't quite worked out exactly what my reasoning will be. Telling her I no longer write for AE is an easily busted fib. Changing my byline will just make her ask where the Bridge stuff went, and I'll have to come up with another lie anyway. Any suggestions/advice from advanced liars is welcome.

At any rate, I did not make particularly level-headed decisions at the Starlight Ballroom (located in lovely Philadelphia) last night. Nope, I made bone-headed, boozy ones. For starters, I thought it was a ducky idea to pop the small, light blue pill my friend's boyfriend handed me right before the show. I haven't had any prescription pills (other than ones with my name on the label) in a long time, owing to my tendency to forget what I took, drink too much, and turn into Obnoxious Girl. But I'm going to a fucking DJ show, I told myself, and that pretty much necessitates certain behaviours. Club kids don't go in much for weed or whiskey, probably because it's hard enough to dance to jungle and breakbeats when you're not sedated. Also, if the crowd at the Starlight is a fair cross section of RJD2 fans, they tend to skew a little too young to be sidling up to the bar. Which makes for a nice, lively crowd.

If I were reviewing audiences, I would have to give last night's high marks. (It would certainly be an easier review to write than the one that I am attempting, about a show whose latter half is a hazy blur of cringe-inducing memories.) The kids were hyper and friendly and refreshingly willing to dance. I've decided that every danceable band should make a concious effort to book as many ballrooms as possible. The spacious Starlight resembles nothing so much as a roller-skating rink, with a disco ball, cheesy neon starbursts flashing on the walls, and red vinyl booths lining the rear end of the dance floor, right in front of a snack bar that sells various fried things that all smell like onions. But it is, in fact, a ballroom, with a huuuge floor that allows plenty of elbow room for Obnoxious Girls who wanna cut a rug.

The album RJ's touring on I haven't actually heard yet. Fer yer info, RJD2 (R.J. Krohn, to pals) has only released three proper solo LP's - the critically acclaimed, electrically textured Dead Ringer, 2004's rockier, genre-hopping Since We Last Spoke, and the current platter, The Third Hand. While his first album found a happy home in many a DJ Shadow fan club member's CD book, Since We Last Spoke found him testing the waters in sounds a bit farther off the electrip-hop path, shifting from funky, horn laced cantina jams to indie-pop crooning that wouldn't've sounded out of place on a Postal Service album. In fact, his feathery vocals - which made their singing debut on the second album - sound an awful lot like Ben Gibbard's. Word on the new album is that RJ's stepped up the singing, laying vocals on most of the tracks. Which had me a bit worried, especially when I listened to a couple on the way to the show. That voice does great on melancholy, museful tracks like Since We Last Spoke's "Making Days Longer," which featured light synth lines and dreamy blips and bloops decorating a pretty ditty about a phone call from an old lover. But on some of "The Third Hand"'s more rocking tracks, his soft croon sounded, well, wussy.

I needn't have worried. While the live show was not exactly music to start bar fights too (not that I didn't try), at no point did I feel compelled to call RJD2 a wuss. At least, not to the best of my knowledge. The band was a four-piece, with RJD2 on the turntables and guitar and whatever the fuck else he felt like, plus three other dudes who, ah, did other stuff. I guess. They hit a lot of the funkier tracks off of Since We Last Spoke and proved pretty conclusively that hip-hop based acts do not actually have to suck live. As a band, they incorporate enough actual instrument playing to make the live experience noticeably different from listening to the recorded tracks, something that unfortunately doesn't happen with a lot of sample-heavy DJ acts. Also, Krohn knows how to make working a turn-table as much flashy fun as watching Van Halen do a guitar solo. With showmanship like that, I'll forgive him a little indie-wuss singing. And hopefully, he will forgive me for yelling about jelly. I really did mean it as a compliment, somehow. Quite fond of jelly.

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