WORCESTER - First-time Wu-Tang Clan audience members are easily spotted. They're the ones fidgeting with their watches during the obligatory wait for the band to take the stage. Friday night at the Palladium it was a near-miraculously brief 105 minutes from the stated show time. As one newbie noted with both awe and indignation on the way out, "We waited for them longer than they played."
The question for any show by the fabled Staten Island collective, then, is "was it worth the wait?"
Friday night it was a firm "yes, but. . ."
Yes, the 75-minute performance truly brought the ruckus thanks mostly to a souped-up Method Man, the rapid-fire round-robin rhyming and a discerning sound mix that didn't obscure the famous ghetto noir tracks being laid down by DJ Mathematics. But the leader and man responsible for crafting most of those beats, RZA, was nowhere to be seen in said ruckus.
Yes, most of the remaining octet - down one since the passing of Ol' Dirty Bastard in 2004 - plus a couple of friends got a chance to shine on the microphone, but there wasn't enough time devoted to the endlessly innovative Ghostface Killah. When he wasn't center stage Ghostface vacillated between full shimmying engagement with his comrades - GZA, U-God, Raekwon, Masta Killa, and a raspy sounding Inspectah Deck - and hanging almost in the wings at the side of the stage.
Yes, they hit all the familiar highs any longtime fan would want to hear from their iconic debut "Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)" starting with the rowdy "Wu-Tang Clan Ain't Nothin' Ta F' Wit" and including a manic "C.R.E.A.M." and Method Man's eponymous jam, which was equal parts menace and mischief. And they hit solo offshoots like "Liquid Swords" and "Incarcerated Scarfaces." But by completely ignoring their new album, "8 Diagrams," they dangerously tread the line between vital crew and nostalgia act.
If Method Man was the most frenetic person on stage - egging on his fellow members, walking upright on the outstretched hands of the crowd - he was also the hardest to please.
Three times he stopped to harangue the audience about what he perceived to be a collective lack of energy. "If y'all are tired we can call it a night right now," he threatened. It must've been the fragrant haze enveloping the stage making him paranoid, because just about everyone in the place was cheering, dancing, rapping along, throwing W's in the air and generally doing everything but individually storming the stage and personally reassuring Method how much they were enjoying themselves. This gripe began to grate. (Especially coming from someone nearly two hours late.)
By the conclusion of the Ol' Dirty Bastard tribute portion of the proceedings - including raucous bits of "Brooklyn Zoo" and a snippet of "Got Your Money" - Method was apparently satisfied with the decibel levels of love and the audience clearly forgave the wait, knowing it was better to have an incomplete, slightly disgruntled, Wu-Tang than no Wu-Tang at all.
