40 Versions

The remix of The Game’s “One Blood (It’s OK)” features almost every good rapper you can think of, plus some others that probably shouldn’t be there. In fact, it has so many rappers that you have to wonder about the ones that didn’t get the invite.

• Scarface
• Papoose
• Young Jeezy
• Busta Rhymes
• Ghostface
• Raekwon
• Method Man
• J.R. Writer
• Mike Jones
• Eminem
• Jay-Z
• Three 6 Mafia
• Diddy
• Ludacris
• Justin Timberlake
• Rakim
• Kool G. Rap
• Memphis Bleek
• Joe Budden
• Ice Cube
• Paul Wall
• Trae
• Lil Eazy-E
• Beanie Sigel
• Missy Elliott
• Lupe Fiasco
• Vakill
• AZ
• Lil Kim
• Too Short
• 8-Ball & MJG
• Trick Daddy
• MC Eiht

Saturday night, October 21 — Mojo 13 is a rock-&-punk dive bar that straddles the end of Wilmington and the beginning of Claymont. It curls up to Philadelphia Pike and is tucked near a Mexican restaurant, between a pet salon and an abandoned storefront. Another vacant storefront sits directly across the street. Up and down the road are shopping centers interspersed with gas stations, churches, Happy Harry’s drugstores, and neighborhoods, and walking too far in any one direction will leave you dizzy with the sense that no matter where you end up, you’re a lot closer to home than you think.

Not long ago, Mojo 13 was a similar bar called Sneaky Pete’s, and not long before that, it was Jack’s Brandywine Tavern. Former regulars seem to be slowly noting the change but won’t be relegated to squatter-status. It’s amusing to walk in and see the fading fixtures – those who, unlike many of Mojo’s new guests, cling to a time and place they actually experienced – avoiding the noisy mob scene that has taken over the rest of the bar. Like the new patrons, they don’t budge.

Inside, Mojo 13 looks like a forgotten carnival: a broken-down kids’ ride; a Ms. Pac-Man arcade game; a gumball machine; stickers and band posters slapped on the walls and in the bathrooms; tables and chairs stacked, scattered. People look like they’ve come from somewhere far worse, somewhere unspeakable. There is a pool table in the back that feels removed and cooler than everything else – it’s actually positioned higher than the bar itself — and the mystique makes it, therefore, somewhat off-limits. But the music room, below and occupying half the venue, is open to anyone, and it’s the only thing that really matters at Mojo 13, anyway.

On this night, a band — the term is used very loosely — stalks the small stage (and later, the crowd) with its wizard-like frontman wearing a long, white, fake beard and yielding a long, silver, fake sword. His shirt is off and his thin, wiry frame is perfect for the sort of ridiculous performance freak-art he’s lashing out with. At one point he puts what appears to be a carved-out pumpkin over his head. His partner plays a keyboard. When the wizard isn’t screaming — which isn’t often — the music is a kind of gothic, moody synth-pulse similar to Pornography-style Cure or Soft Cell that’s pretty listenable, even enjoyable. They finish, and no one seems to notice.

Another band plays, this one more intricate, mathematical. They’re better than the first band but much less entertaining. As if to make up for this, two men — one white, one black, both drunk – enter the bar. It’s only a matter of time before one of them gets into a fight, is forced out, and unnerves the relatively calm, yet definitely weird, vibe that had settled in. Cops are called.  People rush to the door, to the windows. The band keeps playing. When they finish, no one seems to notice.

Sometime shortly before 12:30 a.m., the final band of the night quietly gets up. Family makes up a chunk of the audience — a wife, a girlfriend, a manager, a brother. Band members pull out gear and set up instruments between swallows of beer, earnest but not rushed, and it’s a sincere and wholly unpretentious image. They’re wearing sneakers with jeans and T-shirts; there are no props or swords or pumpkins. The frontman looks like a frontman but doesn’t indulge like one, and no one feels overshadowed or out of place.

And then something happens. Because I’m here for just this moment, I might be the only one who notices – cares, even. But it’s amazing: all the strange energy that had filled Mojo 13, all the discordance, the indifference, the staleness — was gone. In its place was transcendence: real, live atmosphere, swelling and soaring and bursting and crashing. These mini-songflights that carry sound coming from somewhere else. Sound held together — holding us together — until it stops, and the lights come up, and there isn’t a band anymore. Just four guys on stage, in jeans and sneakers, ready to go home with the rest of us.

This was the long way around. This was The Scenic Route.