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woke up sore the next morning from saturday night’s M.I.A. show. i’d lost my cell phone since tuesday, so trying to meet up with alan & sara beforehand was a hassle and a half. i actually used a pay phone for the first time in years. did you know that it’s fifty cents to make a call nowadays?

DJ low budget was decent, santogold (w/ amanda blank as backup/hype girl) totally rocked it. i’m sure i would have enjoyed the cool kids more if i was more familiar with their songs. alan called the spank rock cameo, which came during the santogold set. he rapped on one song and they followed it up with a super energetic version of “loose”; an entire room chanting “hoodrat hoodrat hoochie mama” borders on the surreal.

by the time M.I.A. was ready to hit the stage, it was insanely packed. we were practically on top of each other with more and more people trying to push their way to the stage. after an odd, subtitled projection video starring a bald japanese man talking about minorities and democracies, the opening beats of “bamboo banga” started up, the place exploded and didn’t let up for nearly the next two hours. for that matter, neither did M.I.A. her energy seemed like it was endless at times and she kills it as an MC.

highlights included “world town”, a girls-get-on-stage version of “10 dollar” (posted by youtube user maglugna), “pull up the people” and an encore/second set that included some of the best tracks from arular: “bucky done gun”, “U.R.A.Q.T.” and the 2006 singalong favorite “galang”.

by the time the last gunshot samples of “paper planes” rang out, i was a sweaty but euphoric mess. definitely one of my favorite shows of the year. if anyone knows how i can actually buy stuff from the downtown records website it would be appreciated.