Creative Loafing's staff celebrated the weekend early on Wednesday at Gators on Treasure Island. We had just finished our much anticipated Summer Guide issue and the staff had plenty of reasons to party. We munched on vats of hot wings, trays of mini Cubans, and fish spread (whatever that means). I attempted to rally the scattering of patrons and tourists eating on the deck to join us by offering them free Frisbees, but most gave lame excuses like, "I have to work in the morning," or "I don't do parties." Luckily for the CL staff, we were drinking with our boss, which meant the more beers we bought her, the later we could come to work the next day. But even if our publisher wasn't there, I couldn't imagine a better way to spend a Wednesday night, eating fried food, drinking beer, watching the sun sink into the water and, if you're like me, hiding behind giant sunglasses to stare at the legs of the waitstaff who scampered about in short-shorts.
The next night, we were back at Crowbar in Ybor City.
"This is not your normal hip-hop crowd," Crowbar's doorman Wolf told a white-collar security guard Thursday. "It's going to be a nice, relaxed night. These kids came to hear some intelligent shit that flows nice."
Although Wolf was a barbarian of a man with a bone sticking through his lower lip and a hefty chain around his neck, he was obviously enjoying the prospect of not having to break up any fights among the crowd of computer-literate kids who came to see headliner, Kid Koala. He had obviously dealt with his share of idiots for the night. He then related a story to his fellow guard about a college girl rushing to get off a party bus only to trip over her stretched out underwear when it fell around her ankles.
Kush Wonder maneuvered through a maze of technology, new and old, that surrounded him on stage: old school transparency projectors, a mini keyboard, two turntables and a computer. You've probably seen Kush Wonder without realizing it. A poster of this curly haired man in a suit staring up from under an umbrella is pasted on municipal property all over the bay. On stage he seemed like a musical scientist, with white dress shirt and black tie, but it turned out this scraggly looking fellow really wants to be a nurse.
In contrast to Kush, who remained mostly mute during his performance, local beat-boxer Effex took the stage with nothing but a microphone. At first glance, one might think he was mismatched for a show celebrating technical DJs, but not after you heard him perform. He mixed sounds faster than most DJs, throwing in sound effects not limited to whatever records were currently spinning. There was no risk of electronic malfunction. His only concern would have been running out of breath, which never seemed to happen. Each beat came out as distinctly and loud as the last. He even put the mic to his jugular and beat boxed through his throat. Watching Effex perform is like watching Michael Winslow (the sound guy from Police Academy) on speed. Even more impressive than his range of sounds and his lightning pace was his ability to lace vocal samples into the beats: robotic voices, Spanish, even cuts of Jamie Foxx from "Gold Digger."
"If he asked me to sleep with him, I'd have to say yes," the girl in front of me told her boyfriend as Effex performed. When her boyfriend stomped off, she tried to justify the statement to her friend. "I mean, just imagine what he could do with his mouth."
Positive Response kept things lively on the patio, bouncing excitedly between turntables like his own biggest fan. The usually tame patio crowd must have been feeling his music, too, because more than a few were dancing with cans of $2 PBRs and cigarettes.
Tampa's version of Outkast, Blac Soap performed their futuristic funk as if they were in an amphitheater. They were everything that gangster rap is not. The duo bounced around on stage, smiling, while delivering lyrics like "I don't want no baby's mama," on their cautionary song, "Raw Sex in Da Hood." They have all the elements to break through onto the national scene: a wild style, quick, clever rhymes, a lyricist who knows how to produce funked-up beats, dance moves and enough charisma to rival Flava Flav.
"Last time I saw Koala, he played an hour set of death metal," one fan told me. "I mean, you just don't know what to expect with this guy."
For Kid Koala, any recorded sound is fair game, from instructional voice recordings to obscure blues. Unfortunately, I had to leave before the turntablist legend hit the stage. The "computer-science class" peer pressure was just too much, and despite what Wolf thinks, those kids can get feisty.
On Friday, The Red Elvises invaded Skipper's Smokehouse with the kind of rockabilly fit for a David Lynch soundtrack. There was something inherently sinister about the singer's voice, which sounded like Count Dracula on a kid's Halloween album. This moodiness was only amplified by an accordion, organ noises and the psychedelic Elvis-style costumes the band wore. In reality, the band made me more than a little nervous, and I eventually headed out, checking over my shoulder to see if I had been followed by any Russian vampires.
Besides, I don't really "do parties" and I had to work in the morning.
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This article appears in May 7-13, 2008.