So yesterday at around noon our theater gave out free tickets to see Fusion which is a music festival to celebrate the Chinese New Year. The cast was going to include Kanye West so that was enough for me. I’m not the biggest fan of his but for free I couldn’t turn it down. Even if it was slated to start at 7-8PM on a school night. They were probably like $80 seats which sounds like a lot but this is Vegas and they rip you off for shows. Our seats were way in the back. The expensive seats were like $160.

Anyway, the only other band that I knew was gonna be there was Gnarls Barkley whom I don’t like at all. Turns out there were tons of insanely crappy acts there. It started with this pink haired hip hop chick rapping about how she wants my DNA. I was not impressed. Then it was something else crappy I’m sure. I think it was this guy DJ who goes by the name Girl Talk but says he’s not a DJ. He was doing some interesting rock/hip hop mash up stuff throughout the night but all I really wanted to hear was Kanye. The guy was from Pittsburgh and said that the people in Pittsburgh never sit down for his stuff so why was everyone in Vegas sitting. Matt thinks it’s because everyone in Pittsburgh is running for the exits. I was thinking more along the lines of he was a white dude from Pittsburgh playing on his computer in front of a predominantly African American audience who really only wanted to hear Kanye and were being subjected to 4 hours of torture.

So next was some uninteresting Chinese New Year Matrix/Mortal Kombat thing and then the main show. Kicking it off was Spank Rock. I’ll be nice and say I just wanted to hear Kanye. However then, something awesome happened. A guy by the name of Lupe Fiasco whom I was unaware of until last night, came out and just was awesome. This guy alone woulda made the show worth my while. He was really good. I can’t stress that enough.
After him was Gnarley Barkley. They did like 25 minutes of stuff including Crazy. People loved it. I don’t see what the big deal is. Definitely not a fan. But then at like 11:40PM Kanye came on. Sweet. He was hilarious and performed for at least an hour. We left right before the end but I was told he didn’t do anymore songs. He did all his hits and more and was as arrogant as ever. Very energetic and it was definitely a good show.

So in the end I was glad I went. I was asleep by 1:30AM just in time to wake up at 6:10AM to get ready for work. And it’s now 7PM the next day, or the same day depending on how you look at it, and I’m doing just fine. I’m not putting it up with the RHCP/Weezer free show because RHCP were the best live band I’ve ever seen, but it was really, really worth the money. Maybe even a little bit more.

What I’m listening to: Lupe Fiasco – Daydreaming feat. Jill Scott