Well...let me say that my

Well...let me say that my intention is not to make anyone jealous I saw Shadow, except Basik. After all, it is too easy to make him jealous of me. I'm a better hockey player. :)

Anyways, I thought I would share the 'Shadow' experience with those not lucky enough to enjoy.

So its Friday 11/15 and I am digging through Pollstar looking for cool concerts. I always search by city for Lou, Indy, Cincy, Columbus, and Nashville. I see under Cincy, DJ SHADOW in 2 days?!?! I called my roommate at work (he is a bigger Shadow fan than I, and has a huge Private Press poster on the wall) and tell him to get off work early Sunday, we are going to see Shadow. Ticketmaster.com sets me back $46 for the 2 tickets, and we are off.

Sunday, we get to Bogarts around 7:45 for an 8:00 show. The stage set is simple, a huge table full of turntables, etc. with 3 video screens behind him. Finally, at 8:50 Shadow just walks out on stage all non-chalant and picks up a mic. He apologizes, but the opener (I can't remember who) didn't show up. (What kind of professional doesn't show up?????)

So he talks a little, describes his set up- 4 turntables, a sequencer, and some other equip. I'm not really familiar with. He says that since the opener went AWOL, he will just have to play longer.

So he gets into it, and plays songs from all over his discography, many times going for 10-15 minutes mixing several tracks into one big fat one. At the same time, the video screens show different visuals he has put together to compliment/ pass the message he is trying to portray, etc. The visuals were just awesome.

So after about 2 hours, Shadow asks if we want the normal show, or the extended...since we had no opener. Everyone of course screams for the extended, so off he goes again. Played a Private Press medley, including Six Days, that went on for at least 20 minutes.

Shadow says good night, and off stage for about 5 min. He comes back out and tells us he is going to try something new. He is going to use his sequencer and sampler to not only create a song right there with audio, but also sampling the corresponding video. Everytime he touches a sampler button, a sound plays, with corresponding video. He used really cool video from some '70s era how to play drums video to go with a sweet beat he was laying down. He made the video look like the '70s dude was drumming with him. Impressive cutting edge stuff.

A long 2 song jamfest encore, and we left happy as hell. The man is a Turntable Jedi...plain as that. On top of his skills, he just came across as a cool guy...bantering with the crowd, taking requests, etc. He says that the crowd was great that night, so he will have to come back to Cincy (his first gig in Cincy since '97). I know i'll be there.
-BE