Pea pods

Monica and I were fortunate enough to get tickets to a last minute show put on by the Black Eyed Peas at The Independent on Friday night. I'm on the venue's email list and they sent out an email about two hours before the tickets went on sale. Within ten minutes, they were sold out, so right away I felt a sense of privilege even gaining entrance to the place.

Their two opening acts were top notch. Jennifer Johns is a great soul singer who was on stage with only a percussionist and turntablist. She really had a great energy about her. After her, Crown City Rockers came on and really brought down the house. I've never heard of them before, but they have a new fan in me. Each member of the band is a tremendous musician and the performance was impressively tight. I believe they are from Oakland and so I was looking forward to seeing them again some time soon. Unfortunately (for me), they appear to be blowing up a bit, and are now on a long road tour. Ugh. I hope they don't get too big before I see them a few more times in small venues. But if they do.. good for them.

The Black Eyed Peas didn't come on until about 12:45am and by that time we were pretty exhausted from dancing so much. They had just come from SBC Park where they had opened for Dave Matthews and seemed a little tired. But they still put tons of energy into their show, most of which was completely freestyle. They only played one mainstream BEP song that I recognized. In the end, they had both opening bands on stage with them and also brought up Eric Krasno from Soulive on guitar. Quite a finale.

A curious thing about the show was that they kept insisting that the show was supposed to be free and that we should all go ask for refunds. They kept incorporating that mantra into their freestyle raps. I emailed The Independent to see what that was all about. They said I should hear something about it soon via email. Interesting. We'll see what happens.