Last Night: Kid Rock At RodeoHouston

Photos by Marco Torres

Kid Rock
Reliant Stadium
March 14, 2011

First things first: Yes, Aftermath got to Reliant Stadium with plenty of time to spare Monday. One embarrassing screw-up per Rodeo season is more than enough, thank you very much.

Besides, no way were we gonna miss Kid Rock's RodeoHouston debut, if not his first time to play the House That McNair Built.

"Remember that little thing they had here called the Super Bowl?" Rock asked the crowd after "Low Life." "We actually played that, but no one remembers because Janet Jackson showed her boob that night."

Long pause; big cheer. "Good."

Whoever booked the American Badass for the Rodeo this year deserves an A-plus. Aftermath is sure the idea met with some friction among the old, old guard at Reliant Center, the people who (with our sympathy) would likely rather still be booking Charley Pride and Ronnie Milsap, but the Kid delivered. In a handful of previous shows, we've seen him be cruder, we've seen him rock harder, but we've never seen him be more of a crowd-pleaser.

Monday brought a number of firsts to the Rodeo, we're guessing, from the extended Beastie Boys breakdown of "Three Sheets To the Wind" that wound its way into ZZ Top's "Tush" and Detroit homey Ted Nugent's "Cat Scratch Fever" (with Rock on drums), to the video-screen cameos by Beavis and Butt-Head, shaking what their mama Mike Judge gave them during Neanderthal-and-loving-it "Bawitdaba."

Obviously enjoying himself long before he took a swig from the bottle of Jim Beam resting on the turntables, Rock did clean up his act Monday... a little. There was no mention of "Detroit pussy" in opener "Cowboy" - an early tipoff of Rock's passion for country and Southern rock long before he inserted the Allman Brothers' "Midnight Rider" and Waylon's Dukes of Hazzard theme Monday - and his "words of wisdom" in the climactic rap were "Do this," not... well, you know. Radio edit.

Don't worry, the Early Morning Stoned Pimp hasn't gone G-rated. (Judging by the amout of cleavage, short-shorts and skintight halter tops on hand Monday, he would have been in the wrong place anyway.) He dropped the S-bomb every time it came up in the chorus of the AC/DC-grooving "God Bless Saturday," and the litany of transgressions he detailed before "Low Life" morphed into the Georgia Satellites' "Keep Your Hands to Yourself" would have kept even the most permissive priest busy until June.