Mike Ladd's gig is, without doubt, tonight's highlight. His set could have been just one bloke on mic and another on decks but this is a real band. Ladd swaggering on the mic, Craig Nicholls the embodiment of easy cool on guitar and keyboards, Alvin Miller on drums and the all-dancing all-jumping Fred Ones on the decks. They work intuitively together, feeding off each others musicianship and sense of fun. The audience is easily won over by this Brooklyn/Bronx foursome's mix of political diatribe and funky soulful rhythms.
Ladd, a lecturer on the side, not only raps; he does a knee-weakening falsetto and spoken word to boot. He trawls over subjects as diverse as Tom Cruise in Magnolia, haemorrhoids, sexual politics and memories of sampling Todd Rundgren records. His spoken word pieces are delivered with the panache and pacing of a Southern Baptist preacher with a content that would enrage the whole Bible Belt en masse.
He starts one track singing sweetly of being "naked together in the shower" and then turns the R&B tables on us by entering into a spoken word rant against the USAs role in the current spy plane crisis with China. "The Chinese are doing us a favour," he tells the startled audience, "by ridding the world of the American naval menace!." Cue whoops from the crowd, as he continues by railing against artists who "just sing about love" before returning ironically to his own naked in the shower lyrics. Sharp. Mike Ladd somehow combines glitzy showmanship with serious politics without losing his audience along the way.
The band and audience sense the end of a brilliant set is near when on-stage whispers inform us the secondary stage headliners, Def Jux Posse, are late. Professionalism kicks in. Ladd semi-sings with comic timing: "The name. Of this band. Is. Filler!"
Although, perhaps improvised, they continue driving along, Ladd prowling the stage in his silver racing jacket with Nichols like a Jimi-Hendrix throwback. Miller's tight drumming is complemented by Ones' "scratching, that's not anal" as one punter sheepishly describes it, Everything here is an integral part of their overall sound and not an embellishment.
Mike Ladd, should by rights be huge with this winning combination. As he says at the bar afterwards, "My band is made up of my best friends. We're not making enough money to hire professionals and its more fun to play that way anyway". Then the lecturer-rappers plan comes into focus; "Were celebrating the embarkation of the anti-conquest. Were the black conquistadores". The students in the audience must have been gutted. Why can't all lecturers be hip hop heroes on the side?
