Party Time

Alright, for those of you who are curious to hear my story about what happened this weekend at the concert, I hereby present to you the Ear Training class report I wrote up for it:

This weekend, I attended the “Underground Relief Project.” Fear not, it doesn’t mean underground as in illegal. It means underground as in “non-mainstream.” Now, I was told that the concert was going to be a mix between Rock and Electronica. Well, it looks like the concert was only Electronica with local DJs spinning the wax, one of which I had the fortune of meeting as well: DJ Ohashi. You see, I didn’t just go to see this concert, I helped prepare for it as well. And let me tell you, the true story of the event was not just in the music but in the preparation as well.

I was a security guard at this event, along with many other fine, oversized gentlemen who couldn’t fight the urge to boogie. I also helped prepare for the event by assembling the tools necessary for the visuals. I had to prepare a reel full of visuals to be flashed on the wall during the concert. However, less than a week in advance, I was told that the visuals were to be separate from each other so that the VJ (Video Jockey) had more options for when he mixed the video live. And so, my Friday night was spent splicing the video up until the wee hours of the morning. The next day, I awoke tired and proceeded to the Fairfax Pavillion where I would spend the next seven hours helping prepare for the event. I brought my computer, finished my video splicing whatnot and had some software installed on my computer for the VJ to mix videos with.

The software didn’t work correctly on my computer, but to cut a long story short, the VJ went home to get his computer, found it didn‘t work either and wound up reinstalling my computer after the concert started. Phew! That’s an hour’s worth of plot crammed into one sentence.

Now for the music part: There were four artists there, one for each hour of the concert. That’s right, a FOUR hour concert and I had to be there the full four hours. The artists were Tom Lopez, DJ Ohashi, Frost-Raven and Jeremiah Oakes, all with their own spin on the genre. Electronica music has never tickled my fancy all on it’s own. I’m a tough critic when it comes to that genre. It mostly sounds the same to me, specifically the beat. It’s just a loud THUMP, THUMP, THUMP, THUMP in 4:4 meter all the way through. The tunes sounded like a fart machine synthesized and the monotony of the music could get rather horrifying all around. One really nice thing though was the last artist, Frost-Raven, who incorporated some rather Middle Eastern music into his work. That sounded like something I could definitely listen to casually.

But I really find that Electronica is hard to listen to casually. For me, I can only stand Electronica if I’m on the scene. I have to have an atmosphere for Electronica. This concert, though, had an atmosphere. Dark room, smoke machine, flashing lights, groove ball, and a psychedelic light show: I’m totally there. And there were these guys who were total fans of the Frost-Raven who were some of the most incredible dancers I’ve seen in public in a long time. These guys did flips, spinning leaps, side flips, handstands, you name it. All in all, the concert was a blast and I hope to be able to do something like it again.

There be my story. But on an interesting side note, I did leave one story out that I didn't think was appropriate for the report. After noticing that there were less females at the concert than I had anticipated, I shimmied over to a fellow security guard:

Me: Where mah ladies at?
Him: That's what I was wondering! They're all up front and they're all under 17!

And right he was. Sigh.