The Beat Surrender

So the much anticipated Grandmaster Flash gig to promote his new album ‘The Bridge:Concept Of A Culture’ organised by Rettox Promotions and held in the small but comfortably intimate 808 Club in the upmarket RCA area of Bangkok kicked off about nine o’ clock.

The two Thai resident D.J’s whose names escape me played to about a half full venue of mostly Thai’s but also a fair number of foreigner’s. The crowd were quite unresponsive to the mostly comercial, run of the mill R ‘n’ B set although the D.J’s themselves did a good job mixing each track flawlessly together.

Two stand out tracks that got the crowd moving were surprisingly Robin S,’ ‘Show Me Love’ and ‘Bob Marley’s ‘Could You Be Loved’. Although the majority of the crowd seemed to enjoy the set I felt it an inappropriate build up to one of the most well known architects and innovators of Hip-Hop.

So onto the man of the night,with a name like Grandmaster Flash he made no grand entry and there was no big introduction…he just appeared and began his set without distinction.

At this stage the club was heaving with a mixed crowd of locals and foreigners and the Master launched into his set with a very surprising mish mash of musical style’s. Arrested Development’s ‘Everyday People’ had the whole place singing along and Naughty by Nature’s Hip-Hop hooray’ got the crowd into a frenzy,including myself waving my arms in the air like I just didn’t care.

He interjected the vocal tunes with classic Hip-Hop instrumental’s including Nas’ ‘Made You Look’ over which he would display his scratching and turntable skills. Some surprise’s for me were David Bowie’s ‘Lets Dance’ which was well received as was Nirvana’s ‘Teen Spirit’ although I wasn’t much impressed with the latter.

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