Saturday, November 10, 2012

Belated blog entry - ABK at the Limit

Sunday, July 1st, 2012
ABK, DJ Clay
The Limit, Nashville, TN
$10

As you probably know, our beloved home of underground music in Nashville, the Muse, closed back in May. One of the main concerns that surfaced after its demise was where ABK would play when he came to town. We've been very lucky that ABK has adopted us as a favorite tour stop, so we wanted to make sure that he had a comfy new venue to use when he visits. My friend Lyrical ended up being the promoter for this show, and after some calls, it was decided that The Limit in Printer's Alley was going to be the best alternate venue. It was roughly the same size as the Muse, but the stage is a little lower to the ground, and they have a full bar up front. The main drawbacks would be that there isn't a lot of parking in the immediate area (and basically no free parking), and there isn't any outdoor space that is semi-private. But overall, it was a pretty good choice, IMO.

When the day arrived, it was like 105 degrees outside. Since I knew that Lyrical was doing the promoting for the show, I'd asked in advance if I could sneak some of my Wicked Sweets cupcakes into the dressing room for the guys in the crew to enjoy. She was cool with it, so I'd spent the previous evening whipping up some of my Moon Mist cupcakes and packaging them with my cute new logo. That afternoon, I arrived at The Limit in the afternoon to help her set up, and made sure that my cupcakes were in place and ready for ABK and DJ Clay :-) I even sent out a few tweets about them, which caught DJ Clay's attention!

After a quick pit stop back by my house for a shower, I made it back to the venue just before showtime that night.

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Yep, I'm in the right place!

Of course, due to the location of the venue, I had to park probably half a mile away and make the walk to the venue, but it was alright...better than spending $10 to park next door! When I arrived, we discovered that there had been some confusion about a cooler for the dressing room, so we ended up making a call to Moonshine to see if he happened to have a cooler that we could use. By chance, he did have a cooler in the back of his truck, but he said it hadn't been cleaned out, so we'd have to clean it before we used it. No sweat...so we told him to bring it in. Well, once he arrived, I ended up spending about 15 minutes cleaning out Moonshine's cooler so we could chill some beer for the crew! haha

Once it was time for the show to start, the first act was Project Assassins. This was the second time I'd seen them perform, and they're very entertaining. Next up was local group Lords of Chaos. I've seen them a few times in the last couple of years, and I'm very glad that they've stepped up their game in recent months.

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They're much better now than they were, and they do a good job of engaging the crowd and having fun with their performances. Everyone was having a great time, and since Lords of Chaos around at a lot of Juggalo shows these days, a lot of the crowd knows their lyrics, which always makes a set more fun! As an aside, it was nice to have only two openers for this show, both of which were entertaining and gave good performances, instead of having 5 or 6 people that no one cares about.

Just before ABK's crew went onstage, most everyone went outside to chill for a bit. While it was a much busier area to be in than the Muse (which had it's own parking lot and alley), I didn't think being right on the street was too bad, especially on a Sunday night. Had it been a Friday or Saturday, we'd have definitely had more thru traffic, but for now, it was good.

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Homies hanging around outside the venue

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Homie Kross and his wife Amanda

Heading back inside, the next artists on the bill were Gritty, who are one of ABK's openers.

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They were good, and even did this thing where they sat down on the edge of the stage and had the whole audience sit down with them. Never seen that done before, but it was cool! They were a good intro for the show, IMO.

Next on the bill was DJ Clay. This was the second time I'd seen him, the first being when he opened for Twiztid on the World of Webs tour, so I was excited to see him in a smaller venue. Before he took the stage, I checked my Twitter and saw that he'd tweeted a picture of an empty cupcake wrapper sitting on top of the cupcake container! OMG! hahaha I was so excited to see that tweet that I walked around the venue showing it to all my friends hahaha

Once it was time for him to perform, I stood up toward the front so I could make sure to get some good photos, since he's one of the only people I didn't have any good photos of just yet.

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Blood! Guts! Fingers and toes!

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For the first half of his set, he was at the turntables, and spun a bunch of Juggalo favorites like Chicken Huntin' and Bout Ta Bubble.

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Once he had played a bunch of songs there, he grabbed the mic and came out from behind the table to perform a few of his songs, mentioning that he'd had a lot of feedback that people wanted to hear him rap. So he performed a few of his most popular songs, and did a great job of it! Also toward the end of his set, who should walk in but...

Techn9ne

...TECH N9NE!! I knew he was in town since he'd tweeted and asked people what there was to do that night in Nashville, and a bunch of us tweeted back telling him to come to the show. But I had no idea that he would actually show up! He just walked straight into the venue and stood in the back to enjoy the show! So awesome!

Shortly after, ABK took the stage. As always, he did a fantastic job of entertaining the crowd. One great thing about The Limit as a venue is that the stage is only about 6 inches high or so, so the front row of the crowd was pretty much eye level with him the entire time!

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Any Puppet Killa even made an appearance!

ABK always brings his A game, and everyone always has a good time at his shows. His set is usually pretty similar, and always includes songs like Ghetto Neighbor, Get Down and One Last Chance.

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At the end of the set, he called out DJ Clay and the guys from Gritty to come onstage with him for the grand finale to the show. Everyone was having a blast!

After the show, people went backstage for the VIP time, while the rest of us hung around inside the main room of the venue. After a while, some ladies with glowing hula hoops arrived, apparently in anticipation of an after party that never materialized. Unfortunately, one of them got really nasty with Moonshine when he was trying to talk to her, so pretty much all the Juggalos turned our noses up at them since she was being disrespectful to one of our own.

After a while, ABK came out from the back to hang with everyone like he always does, and brought DJ Clay with him. I thanked DJ Clay for the tweet, and he said that he'd really liked the cupcakes!

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Me with DJ Clay

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Me with Moonshine

Everyone eventually migrated outside (away from the rude hula hoop girls) and hung around on the sidewalk outside the venue. While not quite as comfy and private as the outdoor space at the Muse, the back exit that faced onto 4th Avenue was sufficient enough for the folks who wanted to smoke, so they could go in and out with relative ease. Since we weren't able to take any outside alcohol into the venue, ABK and his crew also started to break into some of the beers that were in Moonshine's cooler.

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Kross and Amanda hanging with ABK...

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...as well as hanging with DJ Clay.

After a while, the party started to break up, so I headed off for home and dropped off Kross and his wife along the way.

Overall, I was quite happy with our ABK's first post-Muse show went down. I even asked ABK what he thought of the venue, and he said that he definitely liked it enough to come back, which was great. It was also really cool to meet DJ Clay for the first time, and get to hang out with him like he was one of our homies just like ABK does. It's great to know that we now have at least one more venue that is open to accomodating Nashville's Juggalo crowd.

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