By now it’s hardly worth commenting that rock and hip-hop make good bedfellows. Tonight’s line-up of two rock-influenced rap bands and one punky emo band pose no problem for the pretty boys and girls resembling the cast of ‘Skins’ hanging out in fictional O.C music venue ‘The Bait Shop’.
White rappers get away with it more when they are a) accompanied by black rappers and b) big fat party animals. In Hangar Eighteen it’s no exception. Alaska and Wind are fine rappers and whip the crowd up to join a rousing chorus of “BAKING SODA, BAKING SODA”...a vital ingredient of crack in case you were wondering. They may not lack credibility but come off a little lacklustre with a uniform beat.
Madina Lake fare better, fronted by a pair of screaming skunks on e-numbers, they bounce around on and off the stage. Frontman Nathan Leone, refusing to learn any lessons from a misjudged stage dive a week earlier that landed him in an Oxford A&E, scaled the rigging and braved the ten foot drop into the crowd without incident.
Gym Class Heroes are a hip-hop four-piece from upstate New York, who know how to hold a guitar. Their ten years on the circuit are evident in musical rather than lyrical maturity with an album entitled ‘As Cruel As School Children’ and songs about Myspace friend requests and seducing teachers. MC/Singer Travis McCoy is a work of astonishing physical beauty and charisma with a shock of afro curls that didn’t come from ”sticking my fork in a socket, I just came out my mama’s coochie like this”. He makes much of the band’s outsider status - caused partly by their origins in the ‘burbs rather than an area with an identified sound (like Queens or Long-Island) and partly because they’ve thrown their chips in with the likes of teeny pop-punks Fall Out Boy. Irreverently nicking Pharrell Williams sound without the tedious lounge-jazz is an effective formula and every song sounds like a hit; from the Supertramp sampling ‘Cupid’s Chokehold’ to an Outkast-tastic ‘Queen and I’. But it’s the jubilant encore with a chorus of ‘Got to take our CLOTHES OFF’ that elicits the best response with some bra-chucking and semi-clad crowd-surfing.
