Urban Vancouver

Quannum World Tour 2004 ft. DJ Shadow, Lyrics Born, Lateef, Blackalicious, Joyo Velarde and Lifesavas in Vancouver April 5, 2004

By Richard Eriksson on April 6, 2004 - 2:31am

I've been a fan of DJ Shadow for some 7 years now, and a fan of Quannum since they put out Quannum Spectrum. (A real fan would have been a fan of Quannum's precursor, Solesides, but what can I say, I joined that bandwagon a little later.) DJ Shadow made his third appearance in Vancouver, and the second appearance that I've seen. He had toured with Jeru tha Damaja before I lived in the Lower Mainland and before I had heard of the former. This was the first time that the whole Quannum collective was touring together, and they put on a hell of a show at the Commodore Ballroom on April 5th, 2004.

The highlights for me—and evidently for the crowd as well—were "Lady Don't Tek No" and "Aim For the Flickering Flame"; I had first heard the latter, it only now occurs to me, on the show the collective did for Breezeblock. I'm a little surprised they didn't play "The Wreckoning" by Latyrx (Lateef and Lyrics Born) which was produced by DJ Shadow, but it's a pretty depressing song, so I don't blame them. A friend who wasn't going had told me to tell him how Lyrics Born was going to be, and he stole the show. Early on, someone tried to tug at his collared shirt, but it didn't faze him as he seemed to have the crown under more control than the rest of the rappers. He seemed to be the most charismatic of the rappers too, and while for some the night smacked of effort (especially The Gift of Gab, who is very talented, looked as if he needed to put all he had into it). While all love what they do, Lyrics Born seemed to be having the most fun out on the stage. The three (actually four, but they only had turntables enough for three) were D-Sharp on the audience's left, DJ Shadow in the middle, and Chief Xcel on our right. D-Sharp was the most charismatic of the three, as Shadow and Xcel seemed a lot more interested in their records than the crowd, while D-Sharp was the opposite (though he was talented). It was never established to my satisfaction who the fourth—white—DJ was.

The lowlight (other than the girl next to me who passed out and had to be helped off the floor) was Joyo Velarde. I say this with a heavy heart, because she was evidently a political science major in college (just like yours truly), but she recently had been criticized on the Influx mailing list—a discussion group for DJ Shadow fans which, a little ironically, rarely mentions him—and I didn't know what they were talking about until last night. While she is very pretty—and that's an understatement—her (backup) vocals were overdone. They never seemed to enhance the experience rather than distract from them. This was most true during when DJ Shadow played his "6 Days", and while Jumbo the Garbageman of the Lifesavas had some spoken-word/raps, Joyo's vocals were a few octaves too high. Another lowlight was that the men's t-shirts were sold out before I got there, but that money will be going into the Quannum coffers in the form of a purchase of The Lifesavas' Spirit of Stone.

I'm glad I stuck around for the end though, because as pumped as the crowd was during the show, they were the loudest during the finale freestyling. Not that I could hear what they were saying, but the whole collective, just as they started the show, were all on stage at once and playing off each other as well as the crowd. The show ranks with the performace The Roots put on opening for Rage Against the Machine concert in 1997 in terms of the hiphop shows I've been to, and this one wins out because Quannum was better able to play to the crowd because of the small venue.