I have just witnessed one of the most embarrasing spectacles of the twentieth century. last night, brian, Jess, (brian's friend) Scott, & I all went down to the waterfront to catch a "free" show. the scheduled entertainment for the evening was Tone Loc and C&C Music Factory. I wasn't expecting much, but it was a free show, and I did recognize the names involved–I even actually used to like Tone Loc, so I thought it would be an interesting evening out for four broke-and-bored-as-hell people.
as we approached the entrance, we noticed that they were actually taking money, so in a flash of fortuitous thought, we decided to take a stroll to a point where we could hop the fence (not that that was a really difficult task, but…).
C&C were already on the stage as we approached, and pretty much from the moment we'd gotten out of the car, we'd been laughing our asses off at the lame attempt at edgy, funky, hip-hop. now, C&C were never what one would consider "good", but I did like that one song at one point (back in high school when the only music I had to listen to was WPKY in Princeton, KY.–if you haven't heard of Princeton, you get the idea…) anyway, as we listened further to the strangling cat sounds coming from the stage, and the worse than a three year old, totally non-flowing "freestyle" coming from the "leader", we began to despair and would have immediately started looking for long range weapons, had we not been completely mind-wiped before we could protect ourselves.
eventually, we just started yelling for them to get off the stage, go home, go shoot themselves, or whatever during lulls of the "music". death would have been much more enjoyable… a slow, gruesome, excrutiatingly painful death.
I was simply holding out for Tone, holding a flicker of hope in my heart that he might be somewhat good.
all I can say is that he was better. he, at least, could freestyle with some actual style. it was still somewhat dissapointing hearing his live rendition of "Funky Cold Medina" I remembered it being much better, much more dynamic. and the fact that Tone can turn the deep gravely "Tone Loc" voice on and off at will, and that actually 75% of the time he sounded just like every other rapper, kind of dispelled some of the old magic.
the worst blow to the evening came after Tone's little teaser, after he urged the crowd to chant– " I say wild, you say Thing!", then decided not to do Wild Thing, but instead to freestyle some more. not only did he decide to freestyle rather than going on and performing one of his greatest hits, but he invited (or maybe was forced to invite) the guy from C&C onstage to join in the rhymes. a collective groan was heard from the three individuals around me, and we swayed on our feet as we tried to decide whether or not to leave. Tone rapped for a while, then passed the mike to C&C guy (brian just pointed out that his name is Freedom Williams–we can only hope for eventual freedom from mr williams) who immediately started pretending he hadn't stolen all his rhymes from his much more competent predecessors. even with his third grade rhymes, he had absolutely no flow whatsoever. he made it about three, sometimes four phrases, before having to pause for several seconds to rack his tiny brain for more rhyming words.
within 10 seconds of "freedom" taking the stage, we had firmly decided to immediately leave. we had almost forgotten how to walk, and swore we'd just lost over 100 IQ points. the discussion centered firmly around the horror we had just witnessed, and we decided that if we were Tone Loc, on tour with these "performers" we'd probably blow our brains out after the first show.
Tone's journal would probably read something like this…
Comeback Tour 2000
day one:
I can't take it anymore, I tried to hold out, but it's not worth it. Tell my mother I love her, and please forgive me.
tone
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