RJD2 + Bus Driver @ La Tulipe

By Puffy Coates - 04/16/2007

The average fan’s mentality looks to find reliable sources of good music from artists it thinks it can trust, and builds expectations based on the assumption that the artist has a fixed style. So, seldom is the average fan pleased when a favorite artist decides to drastically change their approach.

In mid-2004 when RJD2 vainly called much of his prior catalogue ‘moron music’ in an online interview, it was evident that change was near for the Oregan-born producer. While there was some Internet backlash against this sentiment from confused fans, RJ remained revered because his sophomore release Since We Last Spoke was solid. Touring for the album, he began opening his set with a guitar and a mic, hinting at an ambition beyond the boards that--in retrospect—foreshadowed the Eno-like style employed on this year’s The Third Hand. So why, after RJ played Montreal’s La Tulipe on April 16th with a superb live band, were many fans shocked and disappointed? The boy wonder’s very limited vocal capacities aside, I can only assume that it was because he has moved too far beyond what fans want him to be.

After an impressive set from Freestyle Fellowship affiliate Bus Driver, RJD2 took the stage with 3 musicians and a plethora of instruments including a guitar, a bass, drums, a mini MPC, a Roland Juno and tables. Over the next 30 minutes, these were passed around like joints with RJ, in one inspired sequence, playing the keys with a guitar around his neck before hurrying to the tables to cue up a sample. Powering through live renditions of material from Dead Ringer and Since We Last Spoke, he looked every bit as comfortable playing the instruments as he did behind the tables. The band left the stage halfway through the set at which point RJ returned briefly to mixing and drum programming, his bread and butter.

I had the advantage of being on the balcony so I had a bird’s eye view of the stage and watched, in drunken awe, his hands darting from the mixer to the tables to the drum pads and back. “He should stay on his tables,” the chick beside me uttered. Then the band returned and proceeded to play a more poppy second half consisting mostly of material from The Third Hand, much to her dismay. RJ crooned through most of it, which sounded weird because he can’t really sing, but the music was powerful, unpredictable and brilliantly arranged. While not as striking on record, the live treatment of these songs was something to behold and RJ should be commended for his creative diversity and for having the balls to do something different. Needless to say, the chick left before the encore.

Whether or not the average fan likes RJD2’s new style is inconsequential. He’s already delivered a classic and is currently just doing what good artists do: pushing himself and the limits of how his work is defined. Leonard Cohen once wrote that "the artist’s allegiance is not to the image or its progress in the public domain but to the notion that he is not bound to the world as a given, that he can escape the arrangement of things as they are." So if fans want another Dead Ringer, I suggest they find the cats that are already emulating RJ circa 2003 and buy tickets to their live shows instead. The true artist, meanwhile, is ever-changing and will simply be doing his thing, building new mountains to climb and reaching higher heights.