by Dan O

My nine-year-old son was joking the whole night about the Sun Tiki Lounge show smelling like farts. I told him all shows everywhere smell like farts. We live through the farts for the love of the music. As I come through the door the first thing I notice is that the merch table is being run far too professionally. Now, Strange Famous has stayed in business through large important changes, in sizable part due to the dope gear they provide and how efficiently they provide it. Whether you buy stickers, shirts, cds, etc you get it promptly and with cool extra stuff. I know the reason. When I was stocking up on old Strange Famous digital albums I got a few broken download codes and Storm Davis mended them. While the average merch table cashier is staring into their phone until you get their attention this one is active. Discussing inventory and mandatory shirt purchase minimums. This merch table purveyor wearing three layers in June (the last one a sport coat) is clearly Storm Davis. As his attention turns to me I confirm it is him, he confirms he remembers me, I purchase, and as he says “…and thank you for always repping…” I fade back into the crowd as I throw up my hands “That’s all I do…”

It’s a family affair. This is the first show Sage Francis will play in front of his family. I get to introduce him to my son, my wife says hi. We saw Sage together many times before we got married, those shows live in high regard for her. Sage is connected to Portland Maine in a hard to describe way. I say hello to Dilly Dilly who I always act weird around because she is a star to me. She blew me away when she opened for Sage all those years ago, worked so well with Sontiago and Alias. Her album Of Art and Intention had me mesmerized. She’s in the guest section with DJ Mayonnaise and the necessary connective tissue Strange Famous has here. I can still hear Doo Write in my head as she laughs and waves.

Jesse The Tree comes up for a big hug. He’s first up in 10 minutes. Trying to do the math in my head as my son is 9 years old and this show starts at 8, with four acts he will be in full melt down mode by the end. As Alaska Atoms recently said on Call Out Culture Podcast most rappers aren’t funny. Some are whimsical or silly but most never reach laugh out loud. Sean Price was and Jesse The Tree do. This is the second Jesse set I’ve seen and I noticed an interesting pattern. Jesse is a study in growth through additional resources. Whenever he plays his 2020 era work (Space Tomatoes or Big Mauve Dog) they are the beats you expect from New England indie hip hop. Light mid-tempo with just enough thump to count as such. Jesse destroys those beats with personal images about nature and family, sports references, untraditional braggadocio. When Mopes and Jesse came together to make Pigeon Man it opened up his sound completely. You can feel the energy in the room shift when he does NSFR or Shakedown Street. Mopes as an artist is a hammer. Go big or go home attitude and his production forced Jesse out of that first level of production to where he is now. His flow is so much more durable than any of us knew. The highlight of this set is Flying Beatrice as he stands on the edge of the stage and breathes fire on a beat that could have gone to Juicy J. He jokes during the set that he is trying to get better at giving it all on every song. He talks about a game he played where he had 21 points at half and coasted the rest of the way, wondering what could have been his total. None of it is actually a joke. It’s a real fear that Jesse has, worried that he could fall lazily into the next song and lose access to the fire you need to create moments and leave them for your audience. It’s a fear I have whenever I start writing. Am I forming these sentences the same? Are these words boring? Could I have traded them out for fly @$$ synonyms? Jesse has collaborations with most people on the bill. He’s a rap machine without fear of accessing his fears, his poetry, and his dumb jokes.

A smile took my face over during Myles Bullen’s performance as I saw my wife and son in shock. Outwardly, a bundle of positive energy (my son hilariously said he has pre-school teacher voice) every song is carried out differently. Myles sits in front of a video of fish, whips out a pink umbrella for I’m No Meteorologist. His voice goes from cute to shrieking. I warned my son that he yells but I don’t think he took me seriously. We are very close to the stage, Myles starts discussing this next song as a childrens song and I holler out SMALL CREATURE which is a song featuring Emma Ivy that is about Winnie The Pooh. Myles pauses and smirks “that…is a good request.” This children’s song is about the apocalypse and its Still Be Friends off the same album Mourning Travels. When he puts the Ordinary Magic video behind him and raps while it plays muted I choke up. It’s my favorite music video of last year and a song that feels tied into the essence of Myles who uses the positivity of his rap mission statement to battle the death, anxiety, suicide, police violence that chokes this world we sleep on. After this gentle song stops he leaps off stage and crouches in a ball next to my son. The words explode out of him, the friends who died, the police who pounced whenever they had the chance. He wants to die eating Ice Cream, he wants to die by a lake. The choruses are big and warm, loving, but the pain is always there. By the time he leaves the stage everyone is in love. As kind as he is, the overview is simple: Myles Bullen is a rap machine who freestyled with Eyedea as a teenager and the most organized performer Maine has. He makes every collaboration more than the sum of its parts.

Jesse tells me on a break I will love The Metermaids, they have big Beastie Boys energy. My wife is not a fan but that might be coming down from the natural high of Myles Bullen. I can’t hate it at all. Metermaids are old heads literally doing No Sleep Till Brooklyn covers, trading off at the end of bars, making big songs that rock the crowd to real issues in the world. It’s what Strange Famous has always been about. Mostly, I can’t get over how happy Swell is. Sentence is on the left part of the stage and he’s happy. Looks like someone bopping home with a sandwich he knows is going to be good. Swell is on the right positively tickled. Every line Sentence raps Swell mumbles under his breath and shakes his head on the great ones. He gets up and dances at his son from stage. Swell knows the history here. He tells the crowd it doesn’t feel right to be back without Alias aka Brendon Whitney. Crowd is full of Alias T shirts, one of which is worn under layers by Sage himself. While I’m not in a rush to purchase Metermaids passionate old school music the song Matchbooks is undeniable. Even my wife gives them credit on that one.

I didn’t realize how deep tonight’s history went until Sage started Crack Pipes off 2002’s Personal Journals. You could feel the whole crowds breath as we all yelled every word. This crowd, this amazing crowd. A small group started talking during a performance (at one point) and the woman next to me very kindly asked them to stop…and they did. Countless times people moved out of the way for my son to get a better position. From the fans to the behind-the-scenes folks to the performers this is a connected family that has survived many changes in music and done it together. At one point Sage gives props to Storm Davis and backs off as he delivers a dope double time song while wearing dark shades. Sage raps Makeshift Patriot into the tired face of my son. I couldn’t be happier. The world is full of so much rinky-dink ad agency marketing rap. Winterfresh gum jingle bars. Kids take in so much of it. As we all chant Sea Lion together I hope he can feel how jarring the words are together while understanding those words need to be together in that shape. Sage is just as technically perfect a performer as he was fifteen years ago. Breath control immaculate, speeds up and slows down while every word gets to take the stage fully formed. As he wraps up with Jah Killed Johnny he works himself to a natural emotional conclusion, thanking us for this time together since the time we spend together is the only religion he can truly believe in. Right as Sage puts down the microphone my son races out of the Sun Tiki lounge, so tired he needs out of this closed fart space of generational emotions. Watching my wife run after him I was proud of that too. A show takes a lot out of you and I can’t tell you how many I was excited to leave while infinitely thankful to have been there. I say goodbye to as many people as I can, grateful to the obsessives who could have moved on to new occupations. Could have sold clothing made for tiny celebrity dogs but kept pressing cds and T-shirts. This is what a rapper is son. A rapper is someone who can’t stop rapping.