Choppin' at the Knees.

Yarr.

Iˆ‚m leaving for the ATL in a few hours and Iˆ‚ve spent the morning packing, cleaning and watching West Wing episodes Artooˆ‚s been saving for me. Including the pilot and last nightˆ‚s episode. Damn, I donˆ‚t want to give any spoilers away so I wonˆ‚t, but damn. I kinda miss Sorkin right now. Great storylines, great characters but itˆ‚s missing that punch. All the same, itˆ‚s nice to have my show back. I guess I needed last season off.

But thatˆ‚s not what Iˆ‚m here to talk about today. Nena, Das Nibblet and I went to see Ozomatli last night and it was just as good as Iˆ‚d been hoping itˆ‚d be.

They were tighter than Iˆ‚ve seen them before, but itˆ‚s also the first time Iˆ‚ve ever seen them indoors. My previous Ozo shows were outdoor festivals like KCˆ‚s Festival in the Heartland or Spring Concert @ Carleton (someone remind me to finish the post I started in May about the festival. . .) Outdoor festival v. small club makes a big difference and it was good to see that Ozo can rock both equally hard, but boyhowdy do they rock a small club well.

As per normal the three of us were up near the front of the stage, at times varying from two to four people back (depending on how many stoned sorority girls were in our vicinity) and the show was pretty intense from up there. Not that thereˆ‚s a bad spot to stand at The Granada itˆ‚s small and intimate, but plays like a much larger room. Kinda like a middle ground between the now defunct 7th Street Entry and First Ave in MPLS or mini Aragon in Chicago. . .OK, a really mini Aragon, maybe more like The Metro.

The boys played all the standards and had folks chanting along with them. What was kinda sad was how little Lawrence specific interaction they had. They were in a red state and played the room as such. The only time they seemed to forget this is when WillDog said ˆ¨let them hear you all the way in Ohio!ˆÆ Yeah, Raul and Sheffer nearly died laughing when they heard that line.

Ozo was great, though. Some local DJs played an hour set before Ozo went on. I know the DJs from KJ and theyˆ‚re apparently really nice guys, but they were totally more into their set than the crowd was. Ozo rocked their way through a 90 minute set that sadly, never had them spill out onto Mass. I guess it was too much to ask to have them stop traffic on a rainy and cold November night in Kansas, right?

The crowd around us was pretty good as well. There was one fanboy near us that was trying to pick up women with his apparently superior knowledge of all things Ozo. ˆ¨Yeah, itˆ‚s not like back in the day when you could just hang out with the band, yknow?ˆÆ he was heard to tell two white girl J-Lo wannabes with matching fedoras. There were some Rez Cholos right in the middle of the stage and then some underage (18>21) girls right in front of me. They were hilarious, yo. They reminded us of those white girls in How High. Then, half way through the show, these obnoxious, stoned out of their mind sorority girls showed up. I swear- I was this close to cutting off one of their ponytails. She managed to hit me a few dozen times in the face with it, and I wonˆ‚t get into the way she mauled Nena with that thing. Luckily, she didnˆ‚t touch Das Nibblet. . .cuz sheˆ‚s feisty, she totally would have kicked ponytail girlˆ‚s ass.

As it did in May, what really stood out though was how brown the crowd was. At the Festival of the Heartland Nena and I just assumed that the event had brought every Latino in the tri-state area out of the woodwork. But a Wednesday night show at the Granada is a different animal. We figured that the folks in the house last night mustˆ‚ve all been local, in some sense of the word. We were floored; we kept looking around to see all the brown faces that surrounded us for the majority of the night. It was like weˆ‚d left Lawrence for a short while and had been transported to some strange multi-ethnic universe, where Latinos and Indians were just as likely to be found as small blonde girls.

ˆ¨Shit, I didnˆ‚t know there were this many brown people in LawrenceˆÆ Nena kept telling me. And she was right, yo. It was pretty freakinˆ‚ amazing I hadnˆ‚t seen that many people wearing Haskell shirts in the same place before. It was as if weˆ‚d entered some sort of Platonic ideal of home.

Thatˆ‚s really the big thing I took from the show last night. Iˆ‚m home here. I know Iˆ‚ve mentioned this countless times before, and Iˆ‚m sure Iˆ‚ll say it again and again until folks would do anything to shut me the hell up- but this really is home. ˆ¨Lawrence you with US?ˆÆ MC Jabu kept asking us ˆñ yeah, I was totally with them, because this is home, Iˆ‚m willing to answer the hailing now.