spring weekend musings, a week late

Laura Buckman (bdh)

It's been a week since Spring Weekend at Brown and I thought it was high time (today's 4/20, ba-dum-chsh) one of us wrote something about it, since all three contributers to this bloggy blog were there. I recommend the Brown Daily Herald's summary of the weekend; it has a bunch of good photos, some attendee interviews, and what you really want to know: the figures on how many people were carted off by Emergency Medical Services.

It's a decent and pretty comprehensive article, so I'll use it to compare and contrast our (mostly my) take on the performances.

It characterizes, I'd say correctly, the Vampire Weekend set as "clean and smooth, if uneventful." It's no secret we love VW around here, so we all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves during their set, and the setlist was pretty similar to the previous times we'd seen them. They played the entire album, as well as live staple "Ladies of Cambridge" and a really good, new, still untitled track, which again reinforced my faith that their second album won't be a total letdown. The sound for the set wasn't great -- at times you could barely hear Ezra's guitar, other times his voice, others Rostam's keyboard. The more general problem, I think, is that the crispy guitar doodlings that drive most of the songs aren't suited for venues like the hockey rink at Brown University (the threat of rain moved all the shows indoors). That said, "A-Punk" rocked pretty hard.

Moving on. I've probably listened to The Cool about five times all the way through, so I don't profess to be any sort of Lupe expert. Or a huge fan for that matter. His lyrics are by far the most impressive part of his records, while his beats and hooks are often much less imaginative. It is hard not to compare him to KanYe, his more established Chicagoan counterpart, who somewhat facilitated his rise to stardom. And as I'm sure you know, here at DAA our love for KanYe is rivaled only by our love for VW. So when scrutinized on the Ye Standard, Lupe's lack of infectious KanYesque beats and impossibly catchy choruses outweigh the edge he holds over Ye from a lyrical standpoint. That said, the man puts on a good show. I commented to Dayna during the performance that I'd never seen a rapper be as sharp, energetic, or enthusiastic as Lupe was. It reminded me of videos I'd seen of the Beastie Boys in their heyday, but that was three guys and this was just Mr. Fiasco and a side-kick who's main job was, as you might imagine, to emphasize the last few words of every one his main man's lines. One fan's take was quoted in the BDH article: "Lupe was the shiznits." Seriously, you printed that? He definitely put on an impressive show, though, and Dayna and I are going to see KanYe in Boston in May so we'll see if Ye brings that kind of energy to his live shows.

Now for the Saturday shows. Fact: Girl Talk can really rock a party. Opening for M.I.A., DJ Gregg Gillis had the crowd of 3,000+ in the palm of his hand, and left us wanting more. There was a constant procession of students flooding the stage to dance around the sweaty, shirtless Gillis as he hunched over his laptop, mashing up a myriad of mostly recognizable samples, old and new. If you've seen Girl Talk before, I doubt it was much different than this set, though this one probably had a lot more people at it.

And now the main event: M.I.A. The biggest issue I have with the BDH article is that it portrays M.I.A.'s act as a nearly flawless crowd pleaser. This is completely different from what I myself experienced, and what most people I asked thought. The article makes it seem as though the sound volume was the problem, but this, I think, isn't entirely right. The gun shots and air-raid sirens were incredibly loud, washing out her vocals and the music, but even if the levels had all been right, there were still way too many fucking gun shots and air-raid sirens! M.I.A., your two best songs are arguably "Bucky Done Gun" and "Paper Planes" (two of four songs Diplo produced for you, who you've since broken ties with romantically and professionally, good luck with that), and you pretty much destroyed all the novelty of one of them ("Paper Planes") by using it's trademark gunshots in every other song, and between every song. I don't know if it was all your scarfed dj's decision but you definitely didn't put a stop to it. Those interviewed by the BDH thought M.I.A.'s performance was great, while nearly all of the opinions I heard or overheard were along the lines of "M.I.A. sucked balls," and though I'm somewhere in the middle, I'm definitely closer to the latter. Rumor had it that you were sick last weekend so maybe you thought the skull-rattling gunshots would help clear your sinuses but whatever the reasoning was, please rethink it soon or else my first time seeing you will be my last.

As always, feel free to leave your opinion.