At least she wasn't preggers...
It's still weird though. Maya Arulpragasam, better known by her artist name, M.I.A., is 35 years old, yet she looks like she's 18. I can only hope I have any such luck with whoever I'm with when I'm in my 30's.
The show, which was at the Vic Theatre in Lincoln Park, didn't sell out in advance. I was expecting it to, but I guess because she booked two nights there was just the right amount of demand because although I was able to get a ticket at the door, the venue was still crammed with a dizzying array of all-aged bodies. My friend and I tried to get close, but we were stuck in the aisle not even halfway down to the stage, which meant more traffic and less dancing. Really I don't know where there was any room to dance, except for on stage, and one lucky fan did actually get the space to dance when M.I.A. after one of her many quasi-stage dives invited him up to party with her two quirky bald male dancers and three chicks in saris that covered everything but their eyes. When M.I.A. pointed to someone down front and invited them onstage, I assumed it would be a girl, or at least some small dude who must have looked like he could bust moves, but no-- it was a tall lanky white dude with a unzipped hoodie and graphic tee which he kept pulling the corners down in proud display. His dancing was atrocious, and this is even coming from me, and when he quickly ran out of moves he devised every BS idea possible to keep busy, from running around the stage to working the crowd (even standing in front of M.IA. while she sang), to eventually even grinding on the Sri Lankan firecracker herself! And the best part was that she ground back! Honestly, I had a great time at the show, but this guy had the best hands down.
Thankfully he jumped off at the end of the track and we could go back to watching real performers. The music sounded decent overall. I never thought of M.I.A. as hip hop until now, which is definitely what it is at least as far as the live show goes. She had a tall dark-skinned chick DJ who was pretty chill. She focused on her work, but she did smile and nod to the audience enough to show she wasn't working that hard. The first track was a little off, I think M.I.A. just needed to warm up, but once she got going she did her job well... which isn't too hard, considering she only has to do the vocals live which consist of less singing or rapping and more shouting.
So far everything was what I expected. Lots of entertainment on stage, no room to dance, and sound that is decent but not loud enough. What I also expected was MIA to have a crazy outfit and to play mostly stuff from the new album. Now I've only listened to the new album a couple times and I like some tracks but the ones that are abrasive scare me away (after all, I'm always a whole album kinda guy), so I did recognize most of the new songs, but I was surprised that she played a lot of Kala and Arular. In retrospect now it makes more sense because they are much more fun albums, but at the show I was ecstatically surprised to hear so many old tracks.
I first heard of M.I.A. when Kala dropped. I was DJing at the University of Pittsburgh's student radio station and I ripped a copy for myself. This was way before Paper Planes was released as a single and M.I.A. was a household name. In fact, I didn't really like Paper Planes at first. I even meant to play a different track on the album during one of my shows, but I actually accidentally played Paper Planes and just ran with it. Of course, I love it now, but at first I thought the beat was just way less exciting than the rest, and the sound effects during the chorus just seemed silly. So for me at first M.I.A. was Bamboo Banger, Boys, and Jimmy, the first two of which I got to hear that night and was consequently super geeked. The other surprise was that her costume was pretty simple. At first she was wearing something sort of skimpy on top, but then she ended up throwing on just a big white t-shirt which she kept on the rest of the night. I think she wore pants too, so overall very low key, yet she's so damn cute and sexy anyway (she really enjoyed sitting on top of the speaker.... damn lucky speaker) that I can't really complain.
Overall a good time, but again, I would have expected her to have enough cred to secure a show at Congress. At least that way we could dance, even though I'd probably find some way to offend someone with my moves or lack thereof and get kicked out. And then I wouldn't have gotten to hear Paper Planes, which she finally did as the last song of the encore. I was sort of expecting her not to play it actually, just because I'm sure she's quite sick of it, but I'm glad she did because if not for that song she would still remain only a major underground sensation a la Santigold, who is next on my list of world/hip hop/electronic/r&b genre mashers...
M.I.A. - Bamboo Banger
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