Some things live up to the hype

A sample ranking of the best concerts I've ever seen:

1) James Brown, House of Blues, Atlanta Summer Olympics. Went in through the VIP back door, convinced bartenders to serve me beer (I was 19), peed next to Scottie Pippen, and danced with a future TV sportscaster. Plus it was the Godfather of Soul.

2) U2, Verizon Center, October 2005. I'm not even sure if it was a great U2 show, but they're the definitive band of my generation.

3) Arcade Fire (and LCD Soundsystem), Bank of America Pavilion, September 2007. Kind of a crappy venue, but LCD Soundsystem proved that electronic bands can play mean live shows, and then Arcade Fire lived up to all the hype. Slightly fewer people on stage than Wu-Tang, but those that are there tend to be more involved in the show and less likely to be too stoned to sing. Seriously: go see Arcade Fire. They are worth the money and effort.

Liquid Swords

A Wu-Tang concert is music's version of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. How so?

1. If you can identify how many Wu-Tang members there are, you can't identify which ones are actually on stage at any point in time. Conversely, if you can tell how many people are on stage at any point in time, you can't tell which ones are Wu-Tang members.
2. It is impossible to say whether the music Wu-Tang plays during the concert is any good or not. Conversely, if they are playing good music then it is impossible to say whether it is coming from Wu-Tang or an individual member.
   

This might seem nonsensical, but have you been to a Wu-Tang show? I tried counting the number of people on stage tonight about six or seven times. I got numbers ranging from 7 to 13. My best guess is that there were 9 people with microphones who participated regularly, two hype men, and one DJ. But the confidence intervals around each of those numbers is just huge... there may have only been 5 Clan members present. Or maybe they've added a few. The point is that the Wu-Tang is unknowable.

So, is unknowable any good? Who knows. A few of the songs they played during the set were fantastic, but in reality those were just solo performances by Method Man, RZA, or Ghostface with some backing by the rest of the Clan. When they were all participating in a song it was terribly hard to follow what was going on. I can see why their studio albums are great... RZA can orchestrate the competing voices when he has them running through a mixer, but on stage he's just herding cats. The concert was hard to distinguish from the sound check at times.

All that said, I think they've recognized that their influence on the rap scene far outstrips the material they've contributed to the genre, and so they play to their fame: the W hand sign, the love of weed, the whole Asian fetish thing. They haven't really released a relevant album in 5+ years, yet they headlined the last night of a three day music festival in one of the whitest cities in America. They certainly throw out hardcore lyrics, but they don't sound very convincing... they pretty clearly did the rock festivals this summer to pimp a new album that may (or may not) be released this fall. Masta Killa spent five minutes begging people to buy his album and to buy something being released by ODBs family. Or by ODB. Again, the Wu-Tang's business is only knowable by the Wu-Tang.

The other striking thing about the concert was the crowd. I remember some guys from my freshman dorm driving to Raleigh to see Wu-Tang. The concert started with someone (presumably a Wu-Tang Clan member) telling all the white people to move to the back (they did), and most of the audiences pulled out real guns for Wu's 21 gun salute. That same band didn't play tonight. The audience looked like they hadn't moved since Joss Stone opened the day at noon. There were some fat spliffs on the field, but it was mostly white kids bouncing to songs written about the same time they were born. They didn't seem to mind that they were listening to a mediocre show put on by one of the great rap groups of all time. Or was it a great show by one of the mediocre rap groups of all time?

That's the beauty of the Wu-Tang. We can never know anything with certainty.

How many Wu-Tang members can you see?