Phunk Junkeez/ Kottonmouth Kings @ The Granada Theatre-6/07/02
Jun 08 '02
The Bottom Line Read the review, you know you've got time.
Earlier this year, while I was wandering through Virgin record store, a CD caught my eye. It it had a highly sheened package adorned with weed leaves and anime-styled drawings of the band members on it. I picked it up to get a closer look, and found that the disc was "Hidden Stash 2" by southern Cali weed rap group Kottonmouth Kings. Remembering that they'd released a couple songs a year earlier that I liked and some glowing reviews i'd heard from friends, I decided to buy it. I was blown away by the group's mix of punk rock, reggae, and rap, and quickly bought their other two major releases, "Royal Highness" and "High Society", in the next few weeks. I enjoyed them both just as much, so when I opened up the Guide section of the Dallas Morning News last week and found they were coming to town on the "Stoners Reeking Havoc" tour, I immidiatley went out, bought a couple tickets, and got one of my friends, a 300 lb, 6'4 guy named James who plays linebacker on the school football team to go with we. Last night, the time came.
The concert was at a place i'd never heard of called The Granada Theatre. From it's web site, i'd learned it was a renovated movie theatre and that it was strictly a standing theatre for concerts (thank God. Nothing ruins a rock show quicker than seats), but beyond that, I knew nothing. When we got there though, it turned out to be a pretty nice place. It had an alley with mist vents to thread the line through, a restaurant attached, and a bar up at the front of the building. When we actually got to the interior of the theatre, it turned out to be pretty nice as well. It had three tiered levels with some walls seperating them leading down to the stage, lots of lights hung around the stage for effects, and two giant screens on the wall. A couple minutes after we arrived, the speakers started blaring some music I didn't recognize but that definately sounded a lot like the Kings, and videos by King affiliates Humble Gods and Corporate Avenger were played on the screens, along with the Kings' documentary video, appropriately titled "Dopeumentary", in it's entirety. "That sounds like it'd take a really long time!" you might say. It did. We got into the theatre at 8:00, and the show didnt start until 9:15. But it did give me time to get used to the noise, find out how ridiculously expensive the drinks were ($3.50 for a glass of Dr. Pepper?!?!?), talk with a few people I recognized from my high school in the audience, and smoke a cigarette in the lobby with my friend (yes, we're both underage. I'm not a casual smoker though, so don't worry about it).
Anyways, at about 9:15, a DJ I didn't recognize came out to the stage and started performing his own remixed versions of The Crystal Method's "Name of the Game" and Linkin Park's "It's Goin' Down" on the turntables, along with some ambient music I didn't recognize. After about 20 minutes, the lights went down, and a spiky haired guy with a microphone took to the stage. "WHAT'S UP DALLAS?" he boomed as the rest of his band, Phunk Junkeez the most recent signing to the Kings' Suburban Noize records, took to the stage. I wasn't expecting a lot from this group, but to my suprise, I was absolutely blown away. If you haven't heard them, the group plays a really fast, funky, hard version of rapcore that had mosh pits breaking out in the audience even as those who'd chosen to wait in the lobby until the show started were filing in. It was also about this point that I got my only real injury of the evening, when some stupid jacka** decided to start his own most pit by running into my head with his. I got a pretty nice bruise below my right eye, but nothing so bad I would've left the scene.
A few things about the Junkeez' set:
-At some point during the set, every member of the band rapped.... While they were playing their instruments.
-Midway through, the singer told the projectionists to turn the lights down. Accompanied by a drum roll, he then proceded to remove something from his pants and throw it up into the air... so he could catch it in his mouth.
-During their last song, the singer pointed down the middle of the audience and told everyone to step a few feet back from the line he was indicating. He then said "when my hand drops, switch sides!". As the song climaxed, it dropped, and the room just about exploded with the most intense moshing of the night as everyone fought to get through the mass of bodies.
-Before they left the stage, the singer asked the audience who they came here to see. "Kottonmouth Kings!" everybody roared. "What?" he said. "I can't quite hear you. Are you saying Puddle of Mudd?". The crowd responded with a hearty round of boos and roared "Kottonmouth Kings!" a few more times.
Awesome set. What impressed me even more though was that when me and my friend went to the lobby to go grab some water and another smoke during the intermission, the singer was already out in the lobby to greet his fans (this was maybe 2 minutes after his set was over). During a lull in the activity, I walked over, told him "great f**king job" and shook his hand. "What's your name again?" I asked. "They call me Soulman around here" he responded with a laugh. He was a very approchable, nice guy, and i'll definately be looking for releases by his band in the future.
About 20 minutes later, music I recognized by the Kings' DJ, Bobby B, started playing, and we went back into the main room. Shortly thereafter, Bobby B and the group's drummer, Lou Dog took to the stage, newly refurbished with a really nice DJ riser, a huge drum set, and a gigantic weed leaf backdrop, closely followed by the group's "visual assassin" aka hype man, Pakelika, who walked out on stage with an enormous doobie hanging from his lips. After a brief, strange dance routine by him while B and Dog quickly checked their instruments, the punk rock chords of "Dying Daze" began to blast from the speakers, and the lights went down as Johnny Richter, D-Loc, and Brad Daddy X, the group's three vocalists, took to the stage simultaneously to perform the song. The crowd quickly crowded around the stage and before I knew it, I was jumping up and down with everyone else in the room while X held the mic out to the audiece so we could yell "ride until my dying day!" along with the band.
For about the next half hour, no one in the room quit moving as the group pounded through rocked-out mixes of "Bump", "Suburban Life", "Paid Vacation", and a couple tracks that I didn't recognize that I assume were probably from their upcoming alblum that they plugged once, and only once, during the show.
Sadly, the show lost some of it's power after that. The crowd was so exhausted from moving from moving after the first six or seven songs that no one was in that big a hurry to jump or mosh for several songs afterward, including excellent renditions of "King's Blend" and "Bi-Polar". Things picked up again a little during the rocking "Spies", which definately got the crowd moving again. In a somewhat touching moment, the song ended with the lights going down and Daddy X leading the crowd through the chorus of The Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated" a couple times, supposedly in tribute to the recently deceased Dee Dee Ramone. From there, the show was mostly uphill again, with a string of excellent songs that I didn't recognize, but the fact that they were extrememly short and that Corporate Avenger mascot The Taxman joined them onstage for two of them leads me to believe they were probably snippets of songs the Kings' have guested on. They closed with a breathless performace of "Peace Not Greed" that had everyone in the crowd cheering when it was over.... and the Kings' left the stage. No one in the crowd left. "KOTTONMOUTH KINGS!" everyone started chanting, and the Kings' responded by returning for an excellent encore, kicking off with "Bong Tokin' Alchoholics" and closing with "So High", with my favorite Kings' song, "Welcome to the Suburbs", sandwhiched in there somewhere.
A few comments about the Kings' set:
-During "Life Rolls On", X told all the females in the house to get on stage. Though he was quickly joined by a ton of girls, amazingly enough, only one flashed the crowd, and she promptly received an amazingly pi**ed off look from The Taxman. Who would've thought a member of a group that wrote such inspirational songs as "Christians Murdered Indians" and "Jesus Christ Homosexual" would be so moralistic?
-Loc lost his shirt just minutes into the performance, which wouldn't have been so bad if he'd worn a belt to keep his pants up. Seeing how often he had to pull them up to keep his @$$ crack from showing became a show in of itself.
-During the performance, Pakelika periodically held up some magic markered signs with messages on them. Most were fairly harmless fun ("I love pot n' pu**y!" was a highlight), but during "Peace Not Greed", he held one up that said "The Drug War is Terrorism!". Whoa.
-After most of the females had left the stage after "Life Rolls On", one of them stayed behind and proceeded to mount Lou Dog on his drum stool. He played the next few songs with her grinding against him.
-Maybe this is common at smaller theatres, but during the more intense songs, people were leaping so far off the stage that people in the third tier were able to catch them.
The show ultimately ended after the stage was totally crowded with revelers during the final song. I tried to get up, but it already too crowded. Looks like i'll get another chance though, as the show ended with X yelling "See you in October!".
CONCLUSION
Overall, I was blown away by the show. Both groups delivered with high energy, blistering sets that left the crowd wanting more. My only complaint was that the show, at close to three hours with 2 and a half of that being the kings, was that maybe there should've been a little more Phunk Junkeez and a little less Kottonmouth Kings.
overall:
PHUNK JUNKEEZ:A-
KOTTONMOUTH KINGS:B+
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Epinions.com ID:
redmethodman
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Location: Norman, OK
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About Me:
Girl jeans are for girls.
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