Saul Williams at the Paradise

[music | People Under The Stairs - More Than You Know]

What a surprisingly good show, I'm not surprised that it was a good show, but it was just amazingly good. Dragons of Zynth opened, who I'd never heard of, but I really liked them, and they will get my CD money. The first few songs reminded me of Smashing Pumpkins is a big way sound-wise, and their souled-up cover of Janie Jones really made my day, after learning I'd missed Mick Jones's band this past weekend.

Saul Williams was everything we wanted to see. Fantastic show and if you don't go see him you're a moron. Especially considering they were $15 tickets. Like many people, I came to him through Nine Inch Nails, with the tour a couple years back, and then Niggy Tardust, the album so nice, we bought it twice. The thing that motivated the audience most was his poetry. I wouldn't consider myself a huge fan of so called "urban poetry" as much, I think I associate the genre too much with Harold Perrineau. It's probably because I'm neither Urban nor a poet. I hang around in the city a lot, but I hardly think that makes me qualified to call myself Urban. In any case, his imagery was powerful and moving. His band was really tight, despite some on-stage tech problems, which happen all the time to everyone. The audience couldn't tell anyway. Well, I guess one guy yelled that he couldn't hear Williams' voice, but evidently that guy wasn't leaning on the stage, cause he sounded perfectly clear to me.

Natalie said that, even with all the shows we go to, this is right up there among her favorites, and I agree, energetic as hell, great lyrics, great sound, .

Williams' daughter came out for a couple of songs, she joined him on her spring break and was dancing like crazy and singing her head off. If all other career choices are unappealing to her, she could make for one of the great hype-men someday.

I'm glad Boston gave him such a great crowd, hopefully he'll come back around soon, as amazing as Niggy Tardust is, the live show was even better.

I swear that before Sunday's show I'll have a way faster camera. I'm getting really tired of having very non-grainy, usually blurry pictures. I want to swing that pendulum.

I only got a couple of decent photos, here they are:

Dragons of Zynth:

This image is my justification for a faster camera, stupid ISO 400 max, that would have been a cool shot:

Saul Williams:

However, this one, shot (by me) at ISO 1600, would have come out grainy as shit, I know it, so I guess it's a trade-off:

Take Your Daughter to Work Day, FUN!:

My sunglasses are fired for not being awesome enough:

One frustrated beat maker:

I guess that in addition to having a couple loops which weren't sounding quite right, he and Saul couldn't hear a damn thing they were doing on stage because none of their monitors worked. Fun evening for them.