Live at the Cabooze

Makeshift patriot
the flag shop is out of stock
I hang myself at
half mast.

This weekend I had the pleasure of seeing one of my favorite artists, Sage Francis, perform live at the Cabooze. If you haven’t heard of Sage, go to the record store now. In short, he is a white rapper — lyrically, he is miles above any mainstream rapper I have ever heard. His content is often very heavy, cynical, witty, hilarious and political. Before the show I talked to him at the merchandise booth, bought an LP from him, told him I loved his new CD — blah, blah, blah. I also picked up a Graffiti ‘zine from Cecil, one of the rappers from Doomtree who seemed to be an exceedingly nice guy.

The Cabooze is a fairly spacious bar/venue on the edge of downtown Minneapolis. The parking lot was full of Harley Davidsons and leather-clad bikers– patrons of the adjacent bar, “Whisky Junction”. Inside, the show was filled with your standard lot of counter-culturist hip-hop punks, urbanites, rap geeks, pierced/tattoed hipsters and barflies. I randomly saw the guy from the record shop who I was talking to about LP players and MPC’s, we exchanged greetings and continued in seperate directions. At the bar, Miller High-Life was on “special” — $3.00 a bottle — hardly what I would consider special. The opening group was rather forgettable so I won’t mention them. Doomtree was next, and they really opened things up. The crowd seemed to enjoy their performance. It was the second time I had seem them that weekend, the previous night they had performed at the Weisman Museum, a dry, smokeless environment full of college kids who didn’t know how to enjoy live rap music. The Suicide Kings came third — a three peice spoken word slam poetry extravaganza. They were quite amazing, rappers without a DJ, poets, whatever you want to call it — it was art. They had songs about masterbation, living with your girlfriend (”this one is dedicated to FUN TIMES!”), slum-lords, and other tales from the city. It was hilarious and quite entertaining.

Sage Francis finally came out at around midnight, dressed in a brown monk’s robe. He performed to a CD player — no DJ. He did cuts from the new CD (A Healthy Distrust) and some old stuff. Halfway through the set he removed the robe, revealing a shirt with George W.’s face on a crossbone design. He had quite a bit to say about George, and Kerry for that matter. “There is a cowboy in the whitehouse, again”. I don’t think he likes either of them.

Overall a great night — here is an interview if you are interested in reading more.