Gnarls Barkley at Webster Hall. Not the most amazing concert in the world, but if you're into the album, then you would have enjoyed it as much as I did.

Here's the full-on recap:

I arrived just at the beginning of Spank Rock's set. Now, I was initially excited to see Spank Rock, which is fronted by a hipster black guy who is backed by a fat white hype man who was guzzling Heiny's the entire set and two DJ's whose scratching never actually came through the mix. Although I was pretty satisfied with their set. The frontman is a bit awkward, and he flops around on the stage at ease, which me likey. Their sound is wonderful, especially live, with the electro-hop buzzes coming right through the speakers and into your heart.





The ironic thing about the show was that there were about 30 black males there in the crowd. I'm not necessarily one to look at race at all when it comes to hip-hop (I'm white, just for the record), but it started to make me wonder when Spank Rock pumped their fists in the air and only 3 men in the audience responded by doing the same. I'm not sure if they actually intended for the audience to mimick them, but 3 black guys followed in suit. The same thing happened when I saw Common at Nokia, except that the crowd was predominately black and the few spotted white people were also pumping their fists in the air. Since when did audiences become so white-washed? AND since when was it ok for grown white men to pump their fist in the air because a rapper was doing it? Thank God none of that happened tonight. Although, Spank Rock did repeat (ad nauseum) at the end of their set something like "White boys copy black folks" or something along those lines. It was chanted, and it was really awkward, since the audience was mostly white. But despite the awkwardness, they ripped through cuts from their album YoYoYoYoYo like "Rick Rubin" and "Chilly Will." Overall, good showmanship and energy. It's just too bad that not a single person in the entire venue even remotely looked like they knew who was on the stage. Damn non-hip-hoppers. You know it's not really a hip-hop event if the assholes behind you are having a conversation about how the recent Guns 'N Roses show changed their lives. Ugh. But I'm not bitter, I swear.

Spank Rock's set ended after about 45 minutes, which seemed rather short, but it was fine. Gnarls Barkley was introduced by a man who came on at around 10:20, who stated that "Gnarls couldn't make it tonight, so the band 'Brushfire' was going to fill in for them by doing their songs." Enter everyone in Gnarls Barkley completely decked out in '80s hair band attire. It was glorious. I kind of love the gimmick they have going on with dressing up, like in their promo pics that they did in dressing like Pedro and Napoleon, Wayne and Garth, Freddy and Jason, etc. The backing band consisted of four string players, three back-up singers, a drummer, Danger Mouse on the recorded sound board, another guy playing the keys, a guitarist, and a bassist. Now, for their songs, which are pretty stripped on St. Elsewhere, they definitely didn't need as many musicians for their show. Danger Mouse could have easily stood on stage and diddled with a CD player for all I care, and the show would've been just as exciting. But alas, the theatrics were important, since Cee-Lo didn't actually run around the stage to entertain.



They went through all of their songs pretty much, the entire album was done in its entirety. Not all the way through the tracklist, but skipped around. The only song that sounded extremely different was the rendition of "Transformer," which lost that Japanese variety show theme-song thing going on, and was substituted for a slower and stripped down sound. Highlights included "Smiley Faces," which had a vibrant synth sound buzzing in. I think it definitely will be their next single, if they have any sense, and if they include that buzzing synth... well, let's just say that girls won't need their vibrators anymore after hearing that noise. We'll leave it at that.





The balcony played host to some special guests: the unbearable P. Diddy, who I am convinced was told by someone at Bad Boy to check out the show. There's no way he understands what they were doing at all. He was just along for the ride. Other guests were T.I., who probably was also confused as hell, and Khujo from Goodie Mob, who THANKFULLY got the best applause out of all of the guests when Cee-Lo shouted them out during the encore. Oh, and the song that they finished with was "Storm Coming," not "Crazy," which they actually played before they left the stage for their encore. It's surprising, because people were more excited for "Smiley Faces" than "Crazy," which was lush and gorgeous in concert. Downpoints included "Boogie Monster" and "Transformers," which don't really hit hard on the record either. But what the hey, I'm over it.



Overall, good show, not great. Cee-Lo is not a very interesting front-man: he doesn't dance - he doesn't really move at all, for that matter - and his voice isn't as sharp and piercing as it is on record. I have a feeling that there's serious studio-tweakage going on with his records, like for example on "The Art of Noise" from his album Cee-Lo Green is the Soul Machine, where he gushes like a waterfall at the beginning... Never could accomplish that live. As for Danger Mouse? Nothing special. Just stood in the background, never came to the front. Although I do really enjoy the fact that both of them seem thoroughly shocked to the reaction to the record. Cee-Lo was truly appreciate for everyone that came out, as he was when I interviewed him for PopMatters about how people were reacting to the record. Would I see them again? Fuck yea. As Chappelle says, they did "Thriller"... "Thriller."

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