Saul Williams, March 25 at the Troubadour

I didn’t know anything about Saul Williams except that Trent Reznor had produced his new album but Andrew, a NIN fan dedicated enough to have an interest in Reznor's other projects, said it would be a great show so I went along, also with Vanessa. And it was. The Troubadour is a great place to see a concerts but the sound can be muddy for voices, which makes it poor for a show where there can be a lot of talking if not rapping, which actually didn’t hurt Saul Williams’ performance as everyone in the crowd was shouting along to his words, including the spoken-word parts. But even if you scored it only on the music it would still be a success, getting big chunks of dance-industrial with the weirdo rap, making for an interesting experiment (and perhaps even better on disc). And the fact that I got street parking made for a great evening as well as being with my friends. And maybe Reznor was in the audience that night? Who knows?