Rachid Taha at the Knitting Factory

by chris cunningham

A couple years ago I came across Rachid Taha via a listening station at the Virgin Megastore. I stood and listened to the whole album and bought it. It was all I listened to for a few months. Rachid is an Algerian who lives in France and his music has a north African vibe. Even though I couldn’t understand a single word I thought it was amazing. One day at work I turned Adnan on to it and he loved it too. So tonight he called me up to see what was up and I told him that Rachid was playing at the Knitting Factory. He said one thing, “We HAVE to go!” He was right even though I was thinking about flaking out. So we hopped over and hoped it wasn’t sold out. We were in. After a couple years of waiting for Rachid to play I finally caught him. Turns out he was the second drunkest singer I’ve ever seen perform. Which was a little disconcerting at the beginning of the show as he was kinda out of it, but then by mid show the band was tight and he was singing strong. The last song he pretty much just layed on the ground. But, the show was awesome. The first drunkest singer? Shane MacGowan [LINK].