The Roots: LIVE

Concert Review: Adelaide, Sth Australia, 12/4/2007

The legendary Roots crew, touring on the back of there critically acclaimed album 'game Theory', arrived in town roughly 12 months since they were last here.

It doesn't take long to establish why these guys are regarded as the premier Hip-Hop live band in the world, let alone one of the best bands in the world period.

They plunge straight in to tracks from their current album, including Flase Media, In the Music and Baby. They then set up what would be a recurring happenstance through the night, and this giving each member of the band his time to shine with his own solo. Without going into details, guitarist Kirk Douglas was the best of an amazing group of solo's, just getting over the line with his heavy metal guitar heroic's.

As for the music, it was hard to keep up as the band morphed one song into the next, genre-hopping without even indication between them. At one point they played at least 20 snippets of Hip-Hop songs back-to-back, from Salt n Pepa to Jay-Z to Eric B and Rakim. It was nothing for the crew to bounce from Jazz Scatting to Reggae leanings, then jump into the standard Rockabilly of 'The Seed 2.0' and see the second verse of that song transform into a motown rave-up. There is no genre of music this group can't master (or is willing to try its hand at). Hang on you say, did they play any dance music? Alright, no they didn't, but a funny thing happened on the way home in the car.

I had been listening to their 'Phrenology' album all day, and suddenly after 2 minutes of silence, the bonus track came on. What do you know, The Roots got all techno. Hey, it's not for everybody, but at least they tried and were pretty convincing. Rolling Stone got it right, this band is one of the best live acts in world, and your life IS poorly for not having seen them.

You can have the next best thing by following the link and downloading FULL live sets (which include cameo's that we Aussies just can't get.
The Roots Live Downloads