Sign of the Times

A few weeks back I bitched about feeling old when I went to concerts. That was mostly because my legs hurt like Hell and most of the people that attend them are born after 1983. Well, now I feel too old for an entirely different reason: I can’t stay awake.

In about two days I’m going to turn 33 years old. In the grand scheme of things, that’s not really that old, but I sure feel otherwise. I’m sitting here, now, typing this, even though just an hour ago I was out in San Francisco at concert. A concert I left just as it was starting, because I was about to pass out from exhaustion.

Some background: this Monday I started a new job as a tech writer at a Bay Area pharmaceutical company, which requires 8 to 5 shifts every day. So it goes. But a few weeks ago, before I had the job, I said agreed interview Dilated Peoples for STASH Magazine at a concert they were doing in San Francisco. Now, this week has been inordinately busy for me, with a night class on Monday and an A’s game last night, and as a result I’m a hair away from burn out before I can even bother celebrating my this weekend. But I knew I had to be a responsible adult and interview Dilated. Besides, I’ve met them once or twice, and they’re genuine cool people.

So I drive out to SF after coming back from work and briefly relaxing on my living room futon, zoning out while the NBA draft plays out on ESPN (Anthony Randolph is probably a decent pick, but he needs to gain like 100 pounds). After getting to the venue, I hook up with my editors and the photographers, and do the interview. That works out peachy: Dilated are really cool and the interview goes well, despite (or because of) the fact that Evidence spends a lot time trying to bullshit me with tales of how they’re going to sign with Jay-Z and be on Roc-A-La-Familia 3 album. On a side note, I find that rappers are always excellent at lying with a straight face. After the interview is over, Nino and Arlene, editors/publishers of STASH, ask me if I’m going to stay for the show, and I pause for a sec. I’ve got work in the morning, complete with an 8 a.m. conference call with someone on the east coast. Only ten years ago though, this would have a no-brainer: I would have decided In an instant that I could stay for the entire show, get a max of four hours of sleep, and been chipper as Hell for the early morning call. Now I’m not so sure.

I decide to give it a shot, and hang around for a lil’ bit. But as soon as the first ac hits the stage, any remnants of energy I may possess leave me body. And it has nothing to do with the act that was on stage: I was just fricking exhausted. I could barely keep my eyes open. Shoot, I can barely keep my eyes open now typing this blog entry.

I knew this was coming: many people I’ve known tell me that the first thing to go with age is ability to stay up late. A part of people is annoyed with myself for not sticking around, and laments that I’m not still in S.F. right now watching Dilated Peoples and Aceyalone perform instead of typing t this. But a larger part of me really needs the sleep.

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.