Girl Talk is king, or queen, and the rest is just details. Sure, the line up said there were some other bands at the Southern Comfort Music Experience in Tempe but reallywas all that other stuff really neccessary? No disrespect to Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Sick Puppies, Cold War Kids and all the other bands, but this lil’ dude has got his thing down.
We all have had the experience. You go to see a DJ or electronica type event and about an hour into it go “damn, this is really boring.” This is the plague of the non-instrument based performance. The quality of the show always falls on the shoulders of you and the people you’re surrounded by and the energy you all bring. Girl Talk nailed what would have been a pretty bland experience by packing the stage with locals you see at the coffee shop and running around Arizona State’s campus and getting them to dance like mad men and women. The energy spilled into the crowd. There were huge smiles, more dancing loons and none of that ‘I’m not quite comfortable’ jig that was present at the rest of the concerts.
What really made the SoCo MX so dope had everything to do with the small town in a big city paradox that Tempe and Phoenix have a trademark on. The cities are teaming with Acme brand human beings that are too busy keeping up with top 40 trends in Scottsdale to go out to a free festival. Walking around the Tempe Market Place was like a whose who of every person you casually walked by in the last year that didn’twellmake you understand why Osama hates us.
The magic in live music is the energy that the people around you bring. Think about all the time you spend at a festival staring at the beautiful people and kinda listening to music. When Greg Gillis ( Girl Talk’s less awkward sounding real name) has dozens of people who all embody that energy shaken der asses like no tommorow on stage while he’s performing, it puts the concert’s real attraction on display.
