Mestee Blogger

For my Valentine's Day gift to you, my faithful readers, I present a brand new blog poll. That's not all, though. Because I love you so much, I will share with you Brendan's account of the Tone Loc concert he attended at Mount Snow this weekend. In his defense, he was there for the skiing, not the concert. Anyway, here is Brendan's story...

The ubiquitous Tone-Loc: we all know him, lip-sync to him, even wanted to be
like him in the late 80's and early 90's, for his fabulous insight into female manipulation was good enough to score him two hit songs. Saturday night however, I had the chance to see the E True Holywood-esque side of this over-the-hill rapper trying to impress an après-ski crowd at Mount Snow in Vermont and the reaction of the crowd was far from adoration.

The Tone Loc extravaganza was supposed to start around 9:30, so Sheri and I arrived early (8:00) as instructed by the mountain employees because the show was probably going to
sell out. As we walked in, we ran into a couple of Bates people and I'm sure we both asked the question "What are you doing here?". We drank the promotional beer out of intrigue and waited for Tone but in classic west-coast rapper fashion, he didn't hit the stage until around 11,
making the typically early-to-bed skier crowd very restless. There was a buzz about the "Snow Barn", where all present were asking, "can anyone name a third Tone Loc song?". Sure, everyone is familiar with the lyrical wizardry of the libation known as Funky Cold Medina and we all masterfully spout off the words to "Wild Thing" but can you even think of the words, beat or tune to another Tone Loc song? The answer to that fateful question is there isn't one, at least not in his live performance.

Tone kicked off the show with "Funky Cold Medina", making the crowd wonder what else he was going to do for the whole set and also making Tone immediately sweat through his Fubu gear. He decided to fill his time with covers of other cheesy 90's songs, an impromptu local talent contest, and a freestyle rap battle with his crew and the winner of the talent contest. There was one point in the show when one of Tone's crew, a Rastafarian-looking ghetto rapper was laying down an indecipherable reggae rap when a frustrated, drunk lad in the front decided to throw a full cup of beer in this guy's face. The whitey was immediately removed by the bouncers and tossed out near the front door of the club. This is where he got blind-sided by a member of Tone-Loc's crew. I learned this because on the way out, this drunken idiot was swaying about, chatting with a local cop, and as another local approached, I heard the cop say "This guy wants to file charges against a member of Tone Loc's crew because he cold-cocked him in the face."

Prior to everyone leaving the show, we were treated to an unwanted, forced encore. Tone left the stage after he finished his signature Wild Thing performance and the crowd started to move towards the doors but were enticed back by the voice of the clubs promoter. It was this poor schlep's job to get the crowd "pumped up" and get us loud enough to bring Tone back out for an encore. He failed miserably. He eventually abandoned his "we want tone" and "tone-loc" chants and Tone came back on stage, I think due to contractual obligations. Tone wanted to end the show on a personal note for West Dover, VT so he went back into his bag of crowd involvement chants and when he said "Hay-ay", we were supposed to respond "Westbrook in da house". The problem with Tone's instructions were that we weren't in WestBrook, but West Dover. He continued to say this over and over until one of his entourage filled him in otherwise. His final rap montage got little to no response from the crowd, except that he did manage to pull all the adoring females from the front row up on stage to distract everyone from his terrible performance. The show was entertaining overall, although more comedic than musically enjoyable...but not a bad way to spend the night in West Dover, VT.

I hope you all enjoyed Bredan's story and learned never to go to a Tone Loc show, no matter how tempting it may be to participate in such an ironic experience.

Lastly, I will let you read about these penguins, who have apparently been watching way too many hours of SpongeBob Squarepants.
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