Part 12: Kanye West
Ever since Christmas when Kevin had given me two tickets to see Kanye West I’d been excited about the concert. It had been about a year since I’d been to a big show and I was looking forward to getting out again, even more so because I’ve been hip-hop deprived since coming here to London. It turned out to be perfect timing, too, considering I’d had a rough day of interviewing earlier on. By that evening I was ready to get out of the house and have some fun.
Kevin and I went to Hammersmith for dinner that night, which turned out to be a mission in itself. For some reason we had a difficult time trying to find anywhere to eat. There were pubs around, but they were all packed and didn’t have tables available. We ended up at an Indian restaurant just around the corner from the concert venue. The line to get into the Apollo Hammersmith wound around the corner and past the restaurant, so we had to squeeze by to get in. The food was really great, but it was a little weird trying to eat my dinner when there were people standing outside staring in at us through the front windows. Once we’d finished it was our turn to join the line, which was disconcertingly long. And it was drizzling and cold. Yuck. Luckily enough, it went really fast and we were inside in only about 15 minutes.
The place was absolutely packed, but we found a spot on the lower level where there was enough room to breathe. The crowd was pretty diverse, more so than I had expected. There were lots of young people, some older people, and even some parents of the younger kids scattered around. At one point in the show we had two 40-something dads bobbing their heads to the music on our left, and a pretty grizzled-looking guy in dreads smoking pot to our right. It’s always interesting to see what kind of people turn up at shows.
The show itself was really great. Kanye West was a good performer, if a little too good. Kevin had told me that he’d heard Kanye would stop the show and restart a song if he or anyone else on stage messed up; sure enough, that happened. He stopped over half-way through a song, announced it hadn’t been perfect, and then started from the very beginning, complete with a rehearsed walk past a backdrop of brightly lit video screens, which had seemed impressive the first time, but extremely contrived on the second attempt. I didn’t know most of the songs that were played (alas, no Internet at home has put an end to my downloading days), but he played all of his big hits so I could at least sing along with a few of my favorites. On stage with him were several violinists and an MC that performed hip-hop takes on some classic songs, like “Eleanor Rigby” and “Bittersweet Symphony,” which was one of the best parts of the whole show.
When the show ended we went out to catch the bus back to my place. This involved us seeing the bus drive past us, sprinting about 100 yards down the street to the next stop, and watching it drive away just as we got close enough to slap the doors; such is my luck with the infamous 266 bus. At that time of night we had to wait another 20 minutes in the freezing cold until the next one came. But it was okay…you come to expect these things when you’ve been depending on public transportation for as long as I have—and I’m new at this. I’ve been on trains that have stopped on the tracks for 15 minutes for no apparent reason when I’m running late and I’m about to tear my hair out, but other people onboard aren’t fazed at all. I wonder if this is due to genuine inner-calm, or if it’s because they’ve given up all expectations and have adopted chronic pessimism as a coping device.
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