On Saturday night, I finally got to see the ego himself Kanye West in concert. I have been a fan of his production work for Jay-Z, John Legend, Alicia Keys etc etc as well as his solo releases. He has great showmanship and style. He’s performed in Australia quite a few times, there was the one at the Sydney Opera House with the symphony, Good Vibrations etc but when the Glow in the Dark tour of Australia was announced, I decided Kanye was going to happen for me finally. I bought a ticket for my bro for Xmas, Honka Princess and Dave (with paintball injuries) came along too.
Unfortunately, we missed Scribe, I had seen him before supporting the Beastie Boys. Next up was Nas (it was his first time in Oz, there seemed like a lot of people who were there for him). He did a really great set with some crazy backing musicians especially the guitarists. I couldn’t work out if they were male or female. Nas reminds me of Jay-Z a bit.
Then it was time for the big man, I noticed there was no hype/MC action which you usually get at hip-hop gigs, he just suddenly appeared. To be honest, I thought it was going to be better than it was. I think I had seen snippets from other performances Kanye has done this year and thought I was getting a huge spectacular, which it wasn’t. I was also surprised to see that the top section of Acer Arena was not used. (unlike Stevie Wonder, oops forgot to blog about that). When he did his old stuff, it was great, there are many great tracks (Heard ‘Em Say, Gold Digger, Diamonds from Sierra Leone, Jesus Walks, Flashing Lights, the one with Chris Martin from Coldplay). When he did his well know stuff everyone had their hands in the air! The young Asians in front were screaming and videoing everything, the posse of boys behind were dancing and whooping! For me, the best songs were Through the Wire, Touch the Sky, Stronger and Good Life. When he did his new stuff from 808s and Heartbreak he started to waffle on (in auto tune) in the middle of the songs, there was a part where he was talking about Britney and why people were hammering him for not sticking to rapping. Well, I think he should stick with rapping, producing records and not singing. Kanye, you’re no Marvin Gaye or even Lionel Richie (though the hair is coming close). Overall I had a good time seeing Kanye in concert but was disappointed that he didn’t actually glow in the dark!
australian rozie
…not australian rosie
Dec 09
yeh what’s the go with calling it a “glow in the dark tour” when nothing actually glowed! i only bought tickets on the premise i was going to see some glow in the dark visual spectacular. i at least hoped his sunnies would glow. what a disappointment. and he waffled on heaps about NAS, the media and about his new album in the brisbane leg. the best part was the last song where 2 mins in, he declared that he stuffed it up and commanded the band to restart the song. the lights went out and whilst the song was resetting he blamed the crowd for putting too much pressure on him – this was obviously sarcastic but c’mon, just carry on with the performance. it was painful enough that the song was so long and that he ended on it, but to restart it after 2 mins! gimme a break.
oh and i forgot to mention how cheap the visuals were. stars, clouds and exploding particles. the guy would have made millions off this tour and the best visuals he could give us were stars, clouds and exploding particles!
he also stopped the music at one stage to tell the camera men they were filming him all wrong. the next 5 mins was him giving them instruction on using just two camera wide camera angles and not to overlay the images.
I went to the Melbourne show and was pretty disapointed.. i was having a great time and would have left the show on a high if i had have left before his second encore.. i mean love lovked down went for like 20mins!! I left the show feeling drained and feeling like Kanye needs to be admitted in to a psych ward! And the whole ‘glow in the dark tour’ thing.. just like everything else that went wrong, Kanye blamed it on someone else -apparently the shows “promoters” got confused and it wasn’t supposed to be called that at all…
What the hell you people going to a concert to see the lights ? Stupid !You want to see lights go to the city, I am sure they have put up some big ass Christmas tree for you to look at!!! As for Kanye, you all should have known what to expect. You seen it all before, I mean the article calls him the “ego”, everyone knows it, so why would you expect anything different ? His music was great, I saw everyone getting into it, I will say that he dragged a couple of songs too long. My Favourite song was “Put on” didnt expect it.