This is the official blog of Northern Arizona slam poet Christopher Fox Graham. Begun in 2002, and transferred to blogspot in 2006, FoxTheBlog has recorded more than 670,000 hits since 2009. This blog cover's Graham's poetry, the Arizona poetry slam community and offers tips for slam poets from sources around the Internet. Read CFG's full biography here. Looking for just that one poem? You know the one ... click here to find it.

Friday, July 11, 2003

Blunt Club y Hip Hop

Current Mood: mellow
Current Music: NIN "the Wretched"
Dropped by the Blunt Club at PI last night with KuK and Tony D, as a nice little break before the Sedona Slamboree this weekend.

The place has some good air, tight rhymes, and cheap beer. Tony D got hammered but performed well. A dude from Philly dropped a political piece with some great rhythms and rhymes that set the night off because another performer was from NYC. Spitting lines about dissing the flag and suggesting 9-11 was a hoax ... not a good idea sometimes. This NYC first off started shouting, then a full on mooning, then lost it at the end, violently shouting and punching the stage after the kid finished. Ah, the power of words.

From fuckin' out of nowhere, Mike 360 showed up from Albuquerque. I met him in ALB and Seattle when he was big ball of hate, damn-the-white-man rage, and he totally missed the point of slam. Have a good time. He's lost the militancy, still has an edge, and his political poem was beautiful. Tony D reported having heard the same poem in ALB and their regional tournament. What a flash.

I did "He Needs it Bad" for Tony D. I could milk it without a time limit. It's always a crowd pleaser but not a particularly good poem; it's just a list performed over the top. But it was something good to leave a first time impression with the hosts; being able to play off previous poets. I scored 2nd place and won some tickets to a DJ contest.

Seeing the Drunken Immortals was cool because it's been a long time, but after the hip-hop I heard in St. Louis, Detroit, NYC, and Chicago on the Save the Male Tour, the locals are dull and repetitive. The bass was too hot, the treble too low, and there were no original beats; it was 3 minutes of the same rhythm with rhymes thrown over, like a pack of kids rapping to a CD or the radio. If you're a live band, fucking use it.

Leave for Sedona in 2 hrs.