Sparkling Wit and Top Music
I am waiting to interview Canadian hip-hop legend Buck 65. I'm sitting with an Austrian journalist and her photographer who've just flown in from Spain. The overwhelming but triumphant sense of vagrancy seems remarkably apt for a gig by an artist whose subject matter is so often focused around themes of travel and a rather North American sense of transience.
Buck has gone for food and will be too late for an interview, so I chat with Hamilton, Ontario, Canada native Mayor Mcca, instead, which yields some brief hilarity when he tells me his favourite thing about London is the public transport and he's been reading a lot of Spiderman comics lately. Favourite London memory?
"Probably opening for Feist last year. Leslie is a wonderful girl."
His performance ends up more fraught with comedy than musical intensity because of some technical difficulties with his foot-operated bass guitar. Mayor Mcca is a one-man band, playing harmonica, clarinet, keyboards, guitar, bass drum and bass guitar ... pretty much all at once. And he does it barefoot. His show is fun, kind of White Stripes-ey and people clap and sing along. He makes a lot of jokes to keep us entertained.
And then a young Tom Waits, looking beat in a (fairly) well-kept suit, walks across the stage, touches a keyboard lightly and then proceeds to the microphone. He even sounds deranged and Waits-ian as he introduces himself as C.R. Avery from Kingston, Ontario, Canada. He embarks on a form of story hip-hop I've not heard before - he narrates his life up to his arrival in London from the point-of-view of a [beat]boxer, like Raging Bull or Terry Malloy.
The piece is replete with beat-box bass, drums and synth coming from his mouth as he tells the story. It's almost unbelievable, and he manages to reference Hemingway (somehow).
Later, he sits at the piano, again looking and sounding like Tom Waits (whom Buck 65/Rich Terfry adores), and plays a hip-hop version of Lucinda Williams. I almost cry. It is so beautiful and clever. Later still, he plays a keyboard-guitar as if he's ... Woodhands? I don't know, but it's great, impeccably delicate wordsmithery that thoroughly charms me.
C.R. Avery ends the show and thanks us profusely, "I'm going to be hanging around to watch Buck 65, so I'll be smoking outside or drinking inside. Please come talk to me. I have CDs. And thank you for listening to some hip-hop that's willing to be different."
Before Buck plays I see C.R. outside, smoking. Two Brits have him cornered and are saying things like "help you" and "BBC". I'm passing by, so I say hello and thank him for the Lucinda Williams.
And then Buck plays. There is little fanfare - he enters with his computer and mixing equipment, plugs it in, settles his cap and plays. He does a lot of everything, new and old. The Centaur makes an appearance. There is little in the way of banter. He explains he's been on a -very heavy tour for two months - a tour which he organised himself, without a manager or studio support - through France and then England, and tonight is the last show. His computer stalls, and he curses - "it's been working hard, and it's almost dead. Come on, you bastard! We're almost home!"
Home used to be much closer for Buck, as he lived in Paris for 6 months a year and Toronto for the other 6 months; however, now he lives in Toronto full-time, so he has a long flight ahead of him. He seems tired but happy. He does his hilarious 'modern dance' while he raps during a song from Secret House Against The World, but he leaves out his traditional Mick Jagger impression (which is quite funny).
He jokes a little about a pedophile priest he knew as a child. He does "Roses and Bluejays", which comes across a lot better live, and then does "Blood of a Young Wolf" for an encore. People jump around. It is a very good hip-hop show.
Perhaps the funniest part of the show is Buck's continual use of sparkles:
"When I was a kid playing baseball, I used to throw sparkles every time I hit the ball. It drove everybody else fucking insane, but I loved it. Check it out [throws sparkles] - it's fantastic". And he moves into another song that tosses convention on its skull. And then the gig is over, and he's hanging out, clearing his equipment, talking to kids about whatever they want to ask him while he prepares for a long trip home.