Saul Williams
Amoeba Records
October 27, 2004

Review by Jake Thomas

I recently had the pleasure of going to Amoeba to do some bargain bin digging when this chap Saul Williams was doing a free in-store show. I had heard his name before, but was only vaguely familiar with his sound, having heard an MP3 sometime ago but not really remembering much about. Based on the size of the crowd, though, he must be fairly well known.

I guess he’s a big-timer in the poetry slam game, but I’ve never had much use for the stuff myself (he was even the star of the movie “Slam” which I saw ages ago and had forgot about until I looked up his name on IMDB). That said, he was pretty damn fantastic as a live performer. He performs with a live band, and they were rocking – literally. This is about as close as anyone has ever come at making the rap/rock hybrid actually work. Of course, it’s not so much rapping as it is delivering poetry in his signature way, but most folks (myself included) would have a hard time telling the difference. It seems like I read somewhere that it sounds like “Fugazi as a hip hop group” and that seems like a pretty reasonable description to me. It certainly made my music shopping that day quite a bit better.



---
©2004 playinginfog.com