http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/30/AR2009123002388.html

Concert review: The Roots at 9:30 club, song-surfing at its best
Thursday, December 31, 2009

If NBC ever released a compilation of the Roots' performances as house band for "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon," the DVD commentary track might make your player explode. The veteran Philly hip-hop overachievers won't finish a tune without referencing pieces of nine others. Their hyperlinked performance style is reliably thrilling, though you do sometimes want to yell at song-surfing bandleader/drummer/Twitter addict Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson, "Hey, I was digging that!"

Tuesday night, at the first of two 9:30 club dates, the Roots offered a sweaty, channel-flipping blitz, packing about eight hours of mercilessly funky rap, rock, go-go, jazz and soul into 140 breathless minutes. Though they've continued to tour since they got their house band gig with Fallon, their return to the 9:30 still had a celebratory, school's-out vibe.

An early performance of "How I Got Over," the brassy title cut from their upcoming album, rocked the house so hard that MC Tariq "Black Thought" Trotter shouted "Thank you, good night!" when it was done. But there were two hours and several guest appearances to go -- chiefly Wale, who took video of the crowd with a Flip camcorder while trading verses with Trotter on "Rising Up" and his own "Pretty Girls."

The Roots' discography, though admirable, has rarely captured their onstage range and urgency. The show leaned almost as heavily on those schizo references as on the Roots own material. Guitarist/singer "Captain" Kirk Douglas's made a strong play to steal the gig with a suite of "Sweet Child O' Mine," "Mannish Boy," "Who Do You Love" and "Immigrant Song," among others.

The Roots already provide the most amusing bits on "Late Night," but there's at least one traditional wee-hours-chat-show game you can bet they won't be playing: Stump the band. This band, it don't stump.

-- Chris Klimek

I haven't posted on here in probably 3 years, but after Tuesday night's show I had to say something....amazing. I would pay $100 right now for a dvd of that performance to keep forever. There were people videotaping the show, anyone know if someone sells these things, or do you have to wait 5 years to try and find it on theRootsLive?

Any other OKPs in the audience that night want to share their thoughts/pictures, etc?

I attended the 12/29 and 12/30 show. You are correct, they were amazing.

Even the "mess-ups" are interesting to watch. There was one instance I remember- Quest and Frank were laying down a very subtle backing rythm and Frank was kinda falling behind the beat. I don't think it was very obvious, but I definitely heard it. Quest just kinda gave him "a look" and he was back on. Awesome.

I was up front the first night and on the balcony the second night. I took pictures and video mostly with my iPhone. A few with a point-and-shoot. Some of the shots of the first night are pretty cool. Def nothing close to pro quality though.

The video is just passable. The iPhone tends to start clipping audio very easily. I could post the images on Picassa if you are curious to see them... I guess I could upload the vids to YouTube, but the audio is pretty bad.

>Even the "mess-ups" are interesting to watch. <

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7R1V_gg-tQ




I'm gonna put some stuff up, all my ish is also horrible quality (crackberry), but I think some of the vids are still dope. Post what you got!

A couple of these aren't bad actually.

http://picasaweb.google.com/Barnutz/Roots_930_12292009#slideshow/5421858287280266722

earlier in show
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kH0yhgaQ0ek
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeo-7cfxDMI

Kirk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xliu5eTHk9g

Maldog (this one was so high-pitched it was killing my ears)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92NIWBerKhs

?uest+Knuckles
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjke9dEUJGA

guitar Cap'n and bassist Biddle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xhqSD3mQgs

That's a Rap!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIfrW-JTe0I