You Should Be Honored By My Lateness

Paul and I caught Kanye West last night at the Key Arena. While it was a good, high energy show , it suffered a few setbacks, mainly 30 minute set changes, excepting for pre-Kanye, which was more like a 45 minute set change.

Kanye gave us everything he had, but he condemned his huge band to an unlit orchestra pit while he attempted to fill the entire stage himself... alone... for the entire night. Sure he had rocking screens and lights and smoke and fire... but not any better than I've seen at a Newsboys or Josh Groban concert (Don't ask what I was doing at a Josh Groban concert...) His choice to strip down many of his early songs and ride totally on his vocals was bold, and mostly worked. And his band was incredibly tight.. but in the end, it was one man on a big stage.

To further complicate the night, Kanye gave it a Sci-Fi theme, complete with a spaceship named "Jane" and crash landing on an alien planet. The whole scenario unraveled for me though when the life-size naked anime/barbie doll dropped down from the rafter to talk with Kanye. Not to mention the part in the script where the spaceship assures him that they'll be able to find the power to make it home: "We need the power of the biggest star in the universe,We need you, Kanye!"

There was also the odd trivia fact that Kanye made absolutely no use of any glo-in-the-dark materials, ditching the look from the Grammies.

While it was a really fun show, I'm completed dumbfounded why the LA Times is raving that "Glow in the Dark raises the bar for arena tours as no show has since U2's 1992 Zoo TV breakthrough. It's that innovative and galvanizing." Or the Seattle times claim that "He not only took the concert experience to a new level, he took it to a new planet."

I found myself with the exact opposite thoughts... that whoever put this show together is still stuck in a nightclub in their head, with the show only visible to those on the floor. From our seats, almost 100% of the stage was blocked by lights and rigging. Rather than taking advantage of a stadium's strong points, this was set up (yet again) only for the people on the floor. I literally sat there last night thinking "U2 figured this out 2 decades ago... what's so complicated?" Maybe finally bringing hip-hop into the stadium game, but no where near pushing the envelope.

In the end, the PI may have summed up Kanye's monster ego and self-centered show best with their headline "Kanye was feeling the love -- for himself."