1.14.06:OAR @ MSG

It's completely unacceptable that booger's blog is more active than mine so to spite that seven star addict I'll relent and make a post. Last sunday I had the pleasure of trekking to Madison Square Garden to see O.A.R (Of a Revolution) a band hailing from the crab-cake riddled Maryland area. I heard they put on a good show but I only knew a few choice songs. In other words I didn't up to that point celebrate their entire catalogue.

O.A.R's performance was solid and to some extent there were lucid moments of awe-struckedness, but not from the audience's end; it was from OAR's side. This was easily the largest venue they had ever played and looking around in the top most tier where I was situated (ticketmaster can suck a fat one) there were surprisingly only a few empty seats. The seats that WERE occupied were comprised of pimply teenage boys and girls sucking on marijuana paraphenilia like their state college applications depended on it. These kids were straight of Laguna Beach only 100 times uglier and 1,000,000 more annoying. Apparently a lot of them were under the impression that sucking the clearisil off each other's face in public was acceptable. No. No one wants to see you lock braces with your band geek girlfriend and get a 2 inch chubby in your pants. I almost took a plastic fork from the hot dog stand and performed an impromptu vasectomy in the restroom. Now I won't comment on the jailbait since there is probably some federal agent reading this right now waiting for me to talk about supple breasts and glossy strawberry-scented lips that have NO idea how to deepthroat. As Goldstein said in harold and kumar:
"You know the Holocaust?"
Kumar: "Yeah....."
"Picture the exact opposite!"

For me the highlight of the nite came at the very beginning of the show, when a young Hasidic Jew decked out in all the trimmings came on stage and started rapping,rasta'ing and beatboxing with the backing of a great live band. Instead of dreadlocks he had bologne curls. Instead of Rasta hat he had a yarmulkah. Instead of a kangol jumsuit , he had on a Hasidic suit. His name was Matshiyu and he was AWESOME.

From amazon:

Although reggae's religious overtones are often overshadowed by the music's ties to ganja and the hippie movement, there are some socially active or religious leaning artists out there. One of the newest comes in the unlikely figure of a young Hasidic Jew named Matisyahu. Singing with a slight ghetto patois, in Yiddish, and even displaying considerable beat-box skills, the New Yorker is at his best when he works himself into fits of righteous indignation and Old Testament fervor (the limits of his vocal range are laid bare when he croons on ballads). The lean three-piece band on this live recording, his second album, is aerodynamic and flexible, able to do the slow reggae groove or rock out with ferocity. After 12 tracks of stripped-down reggae, however, the music tends to blend into one long groove. Nonetheless, there is an undeniable urgency in this live recording that comes through loud and clear, making it a live document of note by one of reggae's most interesting new figures. --Tad Hendrickson



Matshiyu even came out at the end of the show do do an encore with OAR and he ended up stealing the show on that one too. Sadly the nite ended at McDonalds watching Hoboken's finest stroll in. The best was the white dude who never got the memo about wiggerdom being a defunct practice getting bitched out by this nerdy indian for cutting the line. I thought for sure that he was gonna get his "Quarter pounder with cheese, hold the quarter pound" rammed up his H1-B but the white dude let me down with just a mutterered "relax man."
Till next time- get in, get off , and get OUT.