Little did I know this morning when I woke up, that I would end up tonight on the Nokia’ s Basement Theather in Time Square jumping with hundreds of people to the unique beats of The Prodigy. I just came home from there and I still can’ t believe it.
It seems Andrew (LimeWire‘ s Graphic Designer) told me about a week ago he was going to see them (when I was fiddling on The Prodigy’ s MySpace page), I guess I didn’ t listen to him, and then today for some reason I mentioned Prodigy,
and he said: ” I’m gonna see them tonight! ”
Me: “WTF?”
Andrew: “Yes, and I told you but I guess you didn’ t pay attention.”
So, we checked the site, and it was sold out, I was so pissed, then he shows me his iMac screen, he’s on craiglist.org and there’ s about 10 people selling tickets… Then there was some hope.
I went to the theather expecting to pay about $80, since the tickets cost $40. I bargained with a black dude in the entrance, he was buying and selling, and he was right in front of the people that check the tickets, so I talked to him, and I ended up getting my ticket for $60, not bad.
I went into a very very nice basement, big nokia screens, 2 or 3 bars, nice deco, nice background sound, good A.C, and there were a few bars on my cell, which made sense since this is Nokia’s place.
A hughe line to check the coats, fuck that, then It’s gonna be a pain in the ass to get it back when I get out, good thing I had my backpack, since I was supposed to go to capoeira, so I put my jacket there when it got hotter waiting for prodigy.
I decided to buy a Heineken, and they told me I needed a band on my arm, that I had to look for a Nokia dude. The Nokia dude asked for my ID, he just flipped it on it’s back, and he had a Pocket PC, which he used to scan the bar codes on my ID, then the screen turned white with green letters that said “Alcohol Ok”, damn it, I liked that!
Got a Heineken for $7, and went inside the theater.
on the background I could see the pod where prodigy would be doing its magic, there were drums on the left side of the stage, and the sound was very nice. I tried to go to the center of the standing space to get the best of sound.
Then this dude came out, blonde, some DJ, called Adam Freeland (best part of it all, is that I didn’ t take a camera with me, I haven’t finished the post and the pictures you see here I got at 01:24am on flickr.com – You gotta love the time we live in, and its only gonna get better!!!!), and he started his set with this heavy metal guitars, and then the audio went out when this sound dude unplugged a Mac Laptop… booooooo, the crowd went.
He started playing his stuff and people were pretty excited the first 5 minutes, then he played, and played, and played, and I even forgot I was there, it was pretty lame, to the exception of a few songs he mixed. The guy was very clean doing his mixes, nothing was ever off beat and I respect that, but his music wasn’ t really getting the crowd, and it was 9:30 and this dude was still on stage… People inflated condoms, and we all played volley-condom, till finally he left, they took out his shit, and 10 minutes later, right before prodigy came on stage… A bunch of dudes that were smoking pot in front of me, started a fight, security came in, people started pointing the fighters, and the show was almost starting and this fuckers were there resolving their issues, security was close and standing up blocking visibility, but right before the prodigy got on stage, huge security people came and took them out of the place by brute force… then a lot of people that were in the back crushed us to the front, and yes, I saw the Prodigy very very close.
There was this tiny little girl next to me, very cute by the way, and I thought she’ d die when the shit started, she didn’ t last half the first song, people started going like crazy jumping in unison, there was no way you could fall, your body would be in equilibrium cause you’d be crushed in every direction… at least for the first minutes, until some assholes thought they were at a ska concert, and by the second song I had to go to the back of the room to be able to appreciate the concert and dance and jump at a decent pace.
I guess the first time I heard Prodigy was back in 97-98 when they came out with The Fat of the Land, then I got one of their first Albums, and last year I bought their whole collection (used) in Amazon.com for very cheap… so today was a great surprise gift for myself, finally what I had heard hundreds (if not thousands) of times was there right in front of me, I had longed to go to a place with loud music, lights, lots of people, and I never thought I’d be able to see them and my longings came to a reality today, I’m so happy, I love living in New York.
So, I remember the first song was an oldie (I guess it was The Law), the second was a version of the new ones (not very sure if it was a version of Girls), and then on the third song Maxim said something like… “when things are hot you need to Exhale” (and everybody started screaming) , “Inhale, Exhale” , and they played Breathe and it was awesome (can’ t believe I was jumping up and down like almost 10 years ago).
Other songs I can remember brought the place to pieces:
Voodo People, Spitfire, Poison, Firestarter, Smack my Bitch up (definetively brought it down), No Good Start The Dance, and they closed the show with Out of Space.
They played for little over and hour and then it was over, too bad they didn’ t play more.
Hope you enjoyed this post as much as I did, as a personal note, I was in the concert and I could only remember my childhood friends Raul and Mauricio from Venezuela, we enjoyed Prodigy a lot, on the car with Mauricio’ s awesome sound system, and also on that underground club called “Espacio” (In La Castellana in Caracas) where we used to get drunk every saturday and dance the rough way (jumps, kicks and elbows), pretty much like people did tonight. Too good times, let’s hope we can meet one day in London and see The Prodigy in their habitat.