By Christopher Lotto
I'd say about a fourth of those who came out to see MF Doom at the Independent on Sept. 18 took off when they found out he wasn't going to be performing. The rest of us stayed - way to go, SF - to watch Pigeon John, a lithe, high-energy smart-ass from the LA underground. The Independent's consolation was to open its doors and waive the admission fee, promising full refunds to ticket holders, so why not shtick around for a little what's his name? I mean, it was Tuesday night, and it was free.
A skilled MC and a well-rounded stage performer, this Pigeon John. He kept it simple: himself, some turntables, some tubs. The set stayed tight even as it went beyond what had been rehearsed for his opening act, and his avuncular talkshit played extremely well between numbers that featured both his Tin Pan Alley tenor and a sharp flow - think
"private-college gangsterism." He took off his sweater to demonstrate the "Pigeon John," a sort of go-go-gadget-
arms, semi-apoplectic running man followed by the gratuitous but ever crowd-pleasing slide from side to side. And he pulled some hilarious faux big baller moves, including handing out a couple $10 bills to audience members.
He likes "black white girls" - don't we all? - and his music seems informed by a variety of popular influences: at the end of the show he had DJ Eq spin the famed guitar intro to "Blackbird," an appropriately rhetorical sign-off (love for the "Grey" and the "White Album").
What seems to define this guy is the way he embraces the "hip-hop for skateboarders and/or liberal-arts-educated bro.s" classification, which, we all know, is a blessing and a curse for underground artists. Playing it down by playing it up, Pigeon John is not afraid to let it be - yuck, yuck - what it is. I half expected him to break out with some
Neil Diamond, such is his bag. But in the end his stuff is really raw enough to prevent his being misassociated with the likes of, say, a Paul Barnam. With story raps and elemental hip-hop references, he definitely engaged the crowd. The punch of live drumming didn't hurt his cause in the slightest.
Pigeon John: long, lean, a little wacky, a tad overexcitable, and, as he himself might put it in his fakest Shea White, "pretty darn interesting, buddy."
digg •
del.icio.us •
sphere •
google
•
Comments (1)
Uh...don't you mean Paul Barman?
Posted by D-Russ | September 26, 2007 01:28 PM