as promised, the roots

the pre-show included head-to-head MC-ing between prepubescent and largely offensive british yutes. good grief. the c-bomb was dropped repeatedly. and was that a homophobic rhyme? eek. perhaps unsurprisingly, the most offensive young man "won". this little competition did afford some entertainment.

Estelle was supporting The Roots, and i have to say i was a little disappointed with her set. i had heard her on bbc 1xtra (radio) a couple of months ago and was disappointed with her live-on-air performance then as well. the mic just wasn't her friend. the bass was too loud. i couldn't hear the bits of the songs that i like. if you hadn't heard her, obviously highly produced tunes, prior to the concert, you probably didn't leave a new fan.

but then The Roots came on. around 11:10, only 10 minutes after they said they'd be out. this was to be a good omen for the concert to follow. they started with some excellent mc-ing with big sounds to get us warmed up. despite this it took me about 45 minutes to get in to the groove enough to be able to nod and sway and generally block out the crowd around me. the middle of their (2 hour!) set was dominated by a jazz vibe and strong keyboards and vocals. god help me, that man (insert name when I find out) can sing. i was definitely carried off to another place for a while. there was equally no lack of rocking-out enhanced by the hendrix-like guitar stylings of the dude who, well, looked like hendrix! a rich encore and a wicked percussion set where everybody was getting into the drumming brought the evening to an unrequited close.

awesome.