Sick of Standing Room Only

I could feel it coming when I was 22. I was in San Francisco, walking back to my car with a group of my friends after a concert. I turned to my buddy Talib and said, “Man, my legs hurt like hell. All this damn standing. I’m going to start bringing crutches to these shows.” Then after dropping everyone off, I went home and lay down, legs aching through the night.

Over a decade later, I don’t need crutches, but it’s becoming really, really clear I’ve gotten too old for the shit. I’d say 90% of the hip-hop shows I go to these days unfold the same way. They are held take place in an overcrowded club, with standing room only. If the act is any sort of popular, the place is completely packed, with each person having maybe six inches of personal space around him/her. The ventilation sucks, yet everyone’s smoking. The sound stinks. The acts are late. The venue’s staff is disorganized. The security working the event are jerks. Everything is overpriced. And not to sound too much like a geezer, but damn everyone there was born in the mid-’80s.

The Dizzee Rascal/El-P show I went to a few nights ago encapsulated a lot of the dumb shit I have to put up with whenever I go to a show these days. First, doors opened late (at 9:30 instead of 9 p.m.; the half hour makes a difference in terms of crowd control). Then the venue’s staff and security acted like jerks. Then I found out even though I was supposed to have passes to the show, I somehow wasn’t on the list. Then the stage area of the rather crowded venue didn’t open until like 10 p.m. Once I finally positioned myself stage right near the front of the stage, I looked around I saw I was surrounded by increasingly drunk young twentysomethings who’d probably turn the show into a moshing/slam-pit extravaganza. At that point I had a moment of clarity, where I realized there was no logical reason why I needed to watch this show near the front of the stage, standing for three hours while packed in like sardines with obnoxious jerks

Even after I moved to the balcony with a couple of friends of mine I ran into while there, the show was still plagued with problems. The first act, Busdriver, didn’t go on until 11 p.m., and his set was sabotaged by sound problems. To their credit, both El-P and Dizzee Rascal rocked their respective sets, but the delays in-between acts seemed interminable. There’s no logical reason why a Wednesday night show should end after 2 a.m.

Maybe I’m just grouchy because 36 hours later, my legs still hurt and one of my good shirts wreaks of cigarette smoke. But I’m starting to have more and more lingering thoughts that I should just give up the hip-hop show game entirely. My legs will probably thank me.