Arrested Development + Heaven Beatbox @ The Assembly, Leamington Spa, 20th February 2015
I knew tonight was going to be about proper hip hop at The Assembly, Arrested development are/were pioneers of the genre from back in the day, you wont hear lyrics about guns, gangs or whips (that’s cars to you and I) tonight. Arrested Development are masters of the old school, their first album “3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days In The Life Of…” way back in 1992 was a commercial and critical success and led to the group winning two Grammy Awards.
The evening started off with Heaven Beatbox, a beat-boxer from Atlanta who is accompanying Arrested Development on their UK tour. The room at this point is still pretty empty with the few people in here sat down and spread around the edges, I thought this one man band might struggle to get much from the room, however, I was wrong. Upon instruction, most of the room stood up and shuffled to the centre of the room, and it didn’t take long for Heaven ( not Kevin, as he points out he is often mistakenly called) to get the small crowd bouncing, the room also seemed to grow, perhaps with more people arriving for the main act but also with people being drawn from the bar next door by the sounds that were coming from this beat-boxer mouth, he finished the set with a great cover of “Forgot About Dre” composed entirely with his mouth and a little assistance from a loop pedal. It was pretty darn impressive and he even managed to drop a few Leamington references in there for good measure, He did a sterling job of warming the crowd up ready for the main act.
After a fairly quick stage turnaround, It was time for Arrested Development. Its been over twenty five years since the band first formed and a few members have been and gone, the diversity of the room reflected this with fans old and young.
The band quite literaly bounded onto the stage with an insane amount of energy that remained for the whole set,. Aside from their first album, Arrested Development have quite a sizeable back-catalogue and we were given a a real mix of material tonight. At times it felt like a big jam session with a few medleys that included A Tribe Called Quest, Kris Kross and House Of Pain, with 1Love coming out from behind the decks to flex his MC muscles whenever he had the chance, and JJ Boogie making his way to the front of the stage with his impressive guitar skills and even more impressive beard. We were also given the first listen of some brand new material which sounded a fresh as ever, but the biggest hitters were definitely the old classics with the room going nuts for “People Everyday” and “Mr Wendal”. We were given the option of hearing what we heard next, with Speech asking the room if we wanted to hear a more stripped back acoustic sound or if we wanted them to go in hard.. The crowd clearly wanted the latter and it was at this point we heard probably my favourite Arrested Development track, and it would seem the favourite of a good few fellow fans here tonight ,”Tennessee”.
Shortly after this, the band thanked us all for coming and left the stage. After what felt like a good few minutes of noise from the fans The band finally appeared back on stage to tell us that they didn’t expect to come back out for an encore, and they had actually all sat down for a drink in their dressing room. The two sound engineers and security staff that headed past me presumably to tell them that we were unlikely to leave if they didn’t reappear seemed to confirm this.
Their encore started with a hip-hop tinged cover of Marvin Gaye’s “Whats Going On” before going into “People Everyday” once again and Bob Marley’s ” 3 Little Birds” and also a drum battle between earlier support act Heaven Beatbox and Smok on the drums and some class work by Za on the bass.
What was massively clear about tonight was the fact that these guys were having fun and they seemed to love every minute up on the stage, I don’t think that Fareedah stopped moving for the whole night and her energy was infectious. Speech oozed charisma and really made everyone feel part of the AD gang, and Tasha LaRae gave us some stunning vocal performances.
Arrested Development tonight showed that after more than 25 years in the business that they still love it and know how to put on a show, Its just a shame the Assembly wasn’t anywhere near to full, as these guys deserved to have it packed out.
Photos & Review – John Dent