Jurassic 5 / Supernatural / J-Rocc by Alan Moore [evil:cat]
Live Review
Manchester Academy
20th July 2001
Warm-up duties were performed admirally by J-Rocc, who gave us a pretty cool straight-up HipHop set. Heads were nodding, feet were beginning to shuffle, and a blue smoke was rising above the crowd. Well, it is a HipHop show after all.
Suddenly Charlie 2na - 6ft plus in a yellow tee - takes to the stage to announce 'The World's Greatest Freestyling MC' - Supernatural. And the guy lived up to the hype.
What kept the act such good fun was the audience participation. First up Super asked for three words from the audience, and then he expertly wove them into his rhymes. They made sense, they rhymed and they scanned perfectly. So what, you ask? Well here are the words: Turntables, Astrophysics and Supercalifragilisticexpialinatural.
He didn't stop there either. Following a skit where he 'transformed' into other MCs (including Biggie and Busta Rhymes), he demanded everybody down the front take an item from their pockets and
hold it up. He then proceeded to rhyme, and every few lines took an item from the audience, held it up, and incorporated it into the rhyme.
The items included lighters, minidiscs, rolling mats, and Super even managed to take a flyer for Run DMC and put their name, the date of the show and the venue into the song.
Supernatural was so good, there's a chance he would have blown away J5 had he not accompanied them on stage to replace Zakir, who was back home awaiting an operation.
But before J5 took to the stage we received another treat - 20 minutes of turntable wizardry from the one and only Cut Chemist. The man expertly wove together numerous tracks, including parts of the Lessons, the 'Thunderkick' routine from Brainfreeze, and the new Chemical Brothers track 'It Began In Afrika'.
The difference between Cut Chemist and the average scratch DJ is that the man was able to both perform technically well and make the crowd dance. Even so, there were still moments when the entire room stood silent and still, in awe at his skills as he ripped at the decks... and then sent everyone off on one again, and again.
The rest of J5 joined him on stage and proceeded to blow us all away. It's difficult to come up with a highlight for the show - there were just too many. The rhymes were amazing and the room regularly erupted as hit after hit was pulled out and played to perfection.
As on the records, there is only one downside to Jurassic 5, which is that outside of Charlie 2na, none of the MCs have a distinctive enough voice to stand out from one another. Not that it matters when 2000 people are having such a good time in one room.
The combination of NuMark and Cut Chemist is pretty much unbeatable, although Cut's sense of showmanship makes him stand out from the two - on several occasions he took to a mini drum kit at the front of the stage to knock out some great HipHop beats.
At one point the two DJs played out a turntable/drum improv session, NuMark complementing Cut's drums with his own samples, scratches and beats from the decks. Later the two did pretty much the same while the rest of the group freestyled over the top.
And of course, out came the portable turntable, which Cut Chemist played hanging from his neck by a guitar strap, while NuMark provided a backing beat to some amazing scratching.
The group was obviously enjoying the show - at one point it was stopped to thank 'all of the UK' for their support, as 'without the UK no-one would know who J5 were'. Let it not be said this group don't give out credit where due.
It has to be said that Supernatural was more than a fill-in for Zakir. He was definitely an asset to the group when the time came to freestyle. J5 even invited a trio of young Manchester MCs onstage with them, saying how they like to expose homegrown talent wherever they go. These three Manc lads were good, and I wish I could remeber their name as they'll be worth watching. The final of the three freestyled so well he had Charlie 2na grinning like a monkey that's just got laid, and he obviously impressed Supernatural as well - no mean feat.
The show drove onwards, the biggest roar being reserved for Concrete Schoolyard, which was played exactly as it should be... it morphed into Concrete And Clay from the Quality Control LP smoothly. It has to be said that the song sounded better than the original recorded version with a backing choir of 2000 J5 fans belting out the line 'No playground tactics / No rabbit-in-a-hat tricks / Just that classic / Rap shit from Jurassic'.
The big question is 'were any tracks from the next album played?' It's hard to say. There were several tracks I'd not heard before. Some were there simply for the group to freestyle over - it's unlikely there will be a track about how great Manchester is on the next album.
If the quality of the freestyling hadn't been so high, it may have been more obvious. A couple of the tracks could well show up on the next album, and they seem to hark back to the J5 EP/LP from 1997. No bad thing, then.
The show itself was quite short - Cut Chemist took to the stage at around 9.30pm, and the show was over before 11pm. This was no bad thing - the group missed out some of their weaker tracks, and stuck to the tracks the crowd could sing along to - Improvise, In The Flesh, World Of Entertainment, anything with a good singalonga-style chorus.
Before we realised it, the show was done. But in true Jurassic style, the band did not take off, they stayed onstage. Mark 7 came right to the front and urged everyone to push forward and get their Tickets signed. I got mine done, even though I had to climb over some people to get to the front.
And finally, that was it - the Word Of Mouth Tour departed Manchester, and 2000 fans left, happy. Looking forward to seeing this crew again.