Elephant Man ADD

Report: Elephant Man in Wuppertal, Germany 11/24/2011

11/25/2011 by Lea Yeah

Review: Elephant Man in Wuppertal, Germany @ Bloomclub 11/24/2011

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Visitors really had to go through some trouble to reach the kind of hidden entrance of the not biggest but cozy basement „Bloom Club“, located in the very middle of Wuppertal, Germany.

After some of the demonstrants, who protested against Elephant Man's concert, have thrown some rotten eggs towards the direction of  the waiting crowd in front of the Bloom Club, visitors of the concert were welcomed by a stinking cloud. Mercifully the foul-smelling scent was not carried indoors and so it already felt like heaven entering the doors and stepping down the stairs to the cellar dancehall area, at least for everyone's nose.

Well-filled but not overcrowded the dancehall area was firstly warmed up by the juggling of the likable guys  from the Wuppertal located Running Irie Soundsystem, whose knew how to use their home-advantage very well, and the female German dancehall singer TriXtar from Dortmund.

90 minutes after the club opened its gates the beats of 2010's Mad Collab Riddim resounded and announced the arrival of O'Neil Morgan Hughlin Bryant a.k.a. Elephant Man. A black dressed man with a silver-glitter chain around his neck and yellow-orange hair bound to two small piggy-tails entered the stage - „This is how we do it“ opened up a crazy show adopted very well by the massive in typical Elephant Style. Surprisingly plain-spoken Father Elephant approached the whole „difficult lyrics“ topic by himself in delivering a short but meaningful speech after his first song in which he straightened distinctly out that in his eyes everybody can do what he and she want to do: „It's your life!“. After that little teaching lesson the typical energy God show ran its course. The title of the next played song  may imply what was next, with „Higher Level“ the Energy God must definitely have meant the Partylevel.

As the German audience learned on the Reggae Jam Festival this year, Elephant Man really likes to squirt his audience with water-bottles and so he engaged in his hobby again a few times during the performance.

That was well received by the crowd which mainly consisted of wild and cheerful youngsters deeply feeling a party mood. From beginning throughout the end the gig was a pure dancehall show full of explosive temper, the Jamaican DJ concentrated with his choice of songs on his favourite topic, the dance. As told to Reggaeville before the show, for Elephant Man dancing is a way for people to free their minds, based on that theory the Wuppertal crowd must have gone home extremely free-minded after the show .
From „All Out“ over „Dance n Sweep“, „In Jamaica“, „Dance“ and „Pon de River“ up to „Whine Up“ the focus of his choice of songs lay clearly in animating people to rock their bodies, emphasized by his characteristic exclamations „scoobaayy... auwaai...“, „shizzle (.. mi nizzle)“ and so on. Additionally he requested the massive consistently to do the famous dance moves like the „over the wall“ or the „signal the plane“ what really kept up the partyvibe.

Dealing with more serious subjects, also Mr. Elephant Man's new tune „Survivor“ (collaboration with  Bounty Killer) sounds really dance-animating. At the end of his performance Father Elephant broached the subject of love when he applied to the German ladies, who he proclaimed to be the most beautiful girls , by presenting his version of the City Life Riddim, „Let Me Be The Man“.

After about 50 minutes of full power entertainment, the Energy God left the stage through the crowd. Surprising another time by acting very pleasant, about 15 minutes after his performance he was still busy by shaking hands and having photos taken with his fans very hasty. As a real hustler, Father Elephant had to hurry up and leave to take part of another gig in Lille (France) in the same night. Due to those circumstances, he seemed even more pleasant because he took his time to take care of his fans anyway. But that wasn't the end of the party. The heated vibe was maintained by the Running Irie Sound again and the party went on until early Friday morning.

All in all, you can say the whole night truly had more to offer than what you could expect from such a niceprice party! Obviously, at a real nice price of 12 euros, a crowd bigger than the club could handle was attracted to join the show and about 50 persons could not be let in anymore. Even the stinking cloud in front of the club was not able to keep them from staying. Even after the Energy God had already left the place there was a handful of persons waiting for entrance at the door.

Ele's message to the protestors: