The night before last, we went to see Missy Elliott. Now, I love Missy deeply. I think her records are great. I love her videos. But her show was DEEPLY annoying. As it was, we had low expectations anyway: it was in the Supertop, which is in an industrial wasteland and is a grotty venue of the 'giant tent with concrete floor' variety; it was a Wednesday and I'm getting too old for this weeknight shit; plus, hiphop shows can really be a crapshoot anyway. As Brent says, you often end up watching a bunch of not-very-good backup guys draped in towels pacing the stage and angrily yelling stuff like 'make some noise!' at the audience. So when the show began I was pleasantly surprised: the stage set up was great (bi-level!), the dancers were terrific, the costumes were fabulous, the choreography was all that, Missy was in good voice, there was only one back-up rapper, all was well. I was tentatively encouraged. But any momentum the show could have gathered was completely hamstrung by a) cutting songs down into shorter versions or medleys. Just because 'The Rain' is an older song with a slower vibe doesn't mean I don't want to hear the whole thing! And 'Minute Man' was literally only a minute long; b) talking too goddamn much. Yeah, it's great that you know how to say 'kia ora', back up dude, and it's nice that everyone got tattoos here, but the lengthy discussions about how we're all now your 'family' and stuff is just cheesy. And stop making us do the wave and scream. We're New Zealanders. And we weren't too bad at making noise, frankly! Plus *each* of the dancers got an introduction and a solo spot. Now, some of them were *incredible* and well worth watching (one dude actually did an *elbow spin*!), but when your entire show is so short on actual music anyway... I swear, we were there 1.5 hours and there were only 45 minutes of music, tops, with about five songs played in their entirety. We actually left early, after Missy started signing tshirts and handing them to audience members from the stage. I read in the Herald this morning that the show ended not with a song, but with a record company exec handing her a gold record. Are you completely divorced from reality, Missy? Come on! That's possibly the lamest end to a concert, well, *ever*, with the possible exception of Altamont. Bah, humbug. Hometown boy Scribe was better. For free. In the AUT quad. With no lights, dancers, or costumes. I must go and see Jurassic 5 on August 1 in order to have my faith in live hiphop restored.