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Concert reviews Music

Dilated Pupils

Rating: NNN


DILATED PEOPLES with SUPERNATURAL, SOURCE OF LABOR, ODDIBLE ODDITIES and MASTERMIND at the Opera House, November 30. Tickets: $24.50. Attendance: 500. Rating: NNN

local nerd rappers oddible Oddities were having trouble reaching the bored Opera House crowd. Their situation didn’t improve when they announced they were signing off with a joint about “a certain type of girl,” called Club Sluts.They left the stage to stone cold silence. An appeal made by Wordsayer of Seattle’s Source of Labor to “show some love for your hometown people” drew only shrugs from the crowd.

The Roots-modelled hiphop band Source of Labor didn’t fare much better. Something about Wordsayer’s choppy rhyme flow and rock-style repetition of catch phrases — some copped from Public Enemy — just didn’t click. The band could pound out a funky groove, but that’s about it.

More annoying than a dull opening act is one that overstays its welcome. After an hour of plodding rap-rock, they kindly made way for fire-spitting freestyler Supernatural.

His set routines are designed to show off his facility for spontaneous creativity, and they haven’t changed much over the years. But the Three MCs impersonation shtick and the Three Words bit — where he weaves meaningful rhymes out of three unconnected words (exquisite, forsaken and cunnilingus on this night) that are shouted by audience members — are still guaranteed roof-raisers.

More impressive still was watching Supernatural rhyme his way around different objects people at the front of the stage pulled from their pockets — a gig flyer, a baby picture, a toy soldier on a parachute — it was all good to Supernatural.

How could Dilated Peoples possibly top such a dazzling one-man display? They couldn’t. Instead, Iriscience and Evidence went about their business of reciting rhymes from their best- known tracks over whatever Beat Junkies’ DJ Babu cut up on the wheels of steel. They unwisely held back their big numbers, Soundbombing and Worst Comes To Worst, till the end, by which time a number of people had left. At least they had the sense to bring Supernatural back and let the star close the show.

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