Live 8 Tracks: Number 6

Leading up to Live 8 on July 2nd, I'm counting down 8 of my favorite live tracks.

#6: "Riot Starter"
-Cypress Hill, Live at the Fillmore (Columbia)

With all due respect to Philadelphia's The Roots and their excellent The Roots Come Alive LP, Cypress Hill's Live at the Fillmore takes the (space) cake as the best live rap album to date.

What makes Fillmore such an outstanding concert recording isn't just the quality of the performance, but the crowd's response to it. They're going absolutely crazy! The band's playing reflects the intensity of their fans' energy. Listening to the crowd's reaction on this disc makes me want to travel back through time and space to San Francisco on August 16, 2000. Along with the Mexico City fans on "Seek and Destroy" from Metallica's Live Shit: Binge and Purge box set, this might be the most vocal audience ever recorded. Crowd interaction is a vital component of live recordings, but the balance has to be just right; too much noise and the music is lost (a common problem with bootlegs), too little noise and the recording doesn't sound spontaneous. Fillmore gets it perfect.

Backed by metal band SX-10, the intensity of the band's performance builds as the night wears on, and on the penultimate track, "Riot Starter", Sen Dog makes a final provacative statement to incite the crowd, "I see a bunch of pussies in the back that don't want to come to the front and get motherfuckin' busy. The fuck you think this is, motherfucker? You ain't in no motherfuckin' gym class. This is Cypress Hill". I imagine all hell breaking loose in the pit as the guitars rip like buzzsaws. If only all rap metal were this potent. Sadly, I can count the number of talented rap-metal bands on one middle finger: Rage Against the Machine.