mtvU described this year's summer mini-festival, the Sunblock Music Festival, as a "killer music event" and did not disappoint. The concert will air on mtvU on 8/10. I've never met anyone who actually has mtvU, so fortunately, it will also be streamed online. But, having attended the event in Baltimore last week, I'd like to give a little preview/review.
The concert was at Pier Six in Baltimore, which, from a distance, looks a bit like a fancy meringue
dessert with several peaks. Or like an elaborate sandcastle. Meringues and sandcastles typically aren't very big, and from the other end of the pier, the pavilion doesn't look very big either. So you can kinda imagine my surprise when I arrive 20 minutes after doors open, 40 minutes before the concert is supposed to start, and find a line three people-think stretching across the fairly large parking lot. Then a comparable line inside for the Boys Like Girls/Gym Class Heroes/The Academy Is... merch tent... Oh man. This gonna be one big party.
But at least mtvU knows how to treat their guests. Half an hour before the concert was scheduled to begin, a DJ came out and started entertaining the crowd. (He might have been some mtvU personality, I don't know... I've never seen a TV that has mtvU.) I was pretty glad to have a cheesy DJ to sneer at during those tediously long breaks between sets at most concerts, and I think much of the crowd felt the same way. His attempts to get up pumped by telling us all the great things he's heard about those crazy partiers in Baltimore worked about as well as those attempts always do - marginally better, in fact, because he was a legitimately cool guy. Not any more cheesy than any other DJ. But he knew the key to getting the crowd to really go crazy: telling them they're going to be on TV. Maybe some of the kids there actually watch mtvU; they certainly jumped around and cheered like they were dying to be on it.
He even got a very substantial part of the audience to leave their seats for a chance to be on TV right now. My friends and I were still kind of suffering from heatstroke because July in Baltimore is just not the best time to be outside, but we could see the masses of girls jumping around and screaming at the mtvU booth thing on the lawn. Five minutes of fame.
Besides the fact that if you see four girls in homemade yellow shirts dancing like crazy, it is probably my friends and me, my favorite thing about having a TV crew there was discovering my dream job: working the ginormous camera on a pole. It looked like it might hurt your arms after a few hours, but getting to swing a camera all over the place and watching kids go bananas whenever it comes near them would be totally worth it. I think.
^So. Cool.
I know you're probably pretty antsy to get to the music, but hey, 15 minutes after the concert was scheduled to start, we were too. I mean, this DJ was cool, but he wasn't quite 45 minutes worth of cool. And the hip-hop he kept playing for us was quite danceable, but we had to save our energy for NeverShoutNever, who should be coming on in... negative 15 minutes. My friend and I couldn't take it anymore and decided to make a pilgrimage to the Boys Like Girls merch table and wait in the monster line there. At least the monster had lost a bit of weight since we arrived. But just a bit. Also, we got treated to a view of a girl bizarrely tucking her tank top into her bra to get the attention of some roadie 50 feet away. What a pleasant way to spend 10 minutes.
By the time, we made it within 5 feet of the merch table, the kids in their seats were cheering like crazy. By the time we were at the table, "On the Brightside" was blaring over the speakers. We were missing NeverShoutNever to buy t-shirts and tote bags! Nooooo!!!!
We blurted out our orders, threw our money at the merch girls, and stretched our legs, ready to sprint back to our seats. Like, really, I prepared to sprint there. No way was my consumerism going to make me miss the cutest guy in the world. At least, not for any longer than necessary to buy the stuff I spent 10 minutes in line for.
NeverShoutNever!
mtvU saved the best performance for first. NeverShoutNever sounded amazing, and his between-song banter was the most adorable thing thing you've ever heard.
The last time I saw NSN perform was in a dark, so-intimate-it's-claustrophobic club on the sketchy side of Baltimore (okay, one of its many sketchy sides). This time, he was only performing a few miles away, but the setting could not have been more different. Well, okay, it could have been in front of a crowd of metalheads or something, but physically, this stage out in the fresh air of the utterly un-sketchy Inner Harbour was quite a change.
And NSN changed his sound accordingly.
Last time, NSN played an intimate little set: he sang and played the tambourine, accompanied by an acoustic guitarist. This time, I believe the tambourine still made an appearance - but so did a ukulele, a harmonica, and an acoustic guitar. And that's just what Chris was playing.
He was joined by his band, The Shout. And with a full band came a fuller sound. And it totally rocked.
His sweet little acoustic songs became slamming rockers. Such a thing would be nearly inconceivable - NSN seems like the antithesis of rock. But it worked. He fleshed out his old acoustic and ukulele songs with the new instruments, and they sounded stronger and more forceful, but still melodic. And the increased intensity was good. The darker songs sounded angrier, as they should - most people wouldn't just write wimpy little acoustic songs about the things he's been through. But the sweet songs were no less sweet. Fans could just jump up and down to them now.
In short, he sounded amazing. Very different from his recordings, but not in a bad way. And he absolutely must record live versions with the full band.
Although NSN is still a solo project and The Shout are just his back-up, Chris gave them chances to shine. His guitarist performed a spectacular solo rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner."
At this show, Chris showed a different side of his music, and he also showed a slightly different side of himself. He kicked his leg up in the air, thrashed around a bit (nothing too crazy), and generally rocked out to the new rockable versions of his songs. But that's certainly not to say that the adorable little guy who repeatedly told the crowd at the Hellogoodbye show was gone.
"You guys are just too cute for your own good, dangnabbit!"
Such shout-outs were sprinkled liberally throughout each break between songs and sometimes even during songs.
And for anyone curious about his unorthodox curse word-substitutes:
"Hellz yeah!" he exclaimed after one song. " I'm trying to stop cursing because cursing is a nasty habit. So I say 'hellz' because the z makes it okay, right?"
So cute. Who could stop themselves from loving him? Especially since he loves the fans so much.
During the second song of his set, "Happy":
"We love you." Plays a few measures.
"We love you." Plays a bit more.
..."We love you."
It was all one big love fest.
To introduce his sweet ukulele tune "Did It Hurt," after telling us we were beautiful, Chris said "I've got a little crush on you, so I wrote a song about you." Cue deafening cheer. Followed by even louder cheer when the crowd found out which song it was.
But it wasn't just love note shout-outs to the crowd as a whole. Chris really tried to connect with the crowd, an extremely valiant effort in a pavilion this big. He handed out several roses to girls in the front rows. A few girls near the middle of the pavilion (aka pretty far away) held up a sign saying "You Make Me Happy." He thanked them from the stage and told them they made him happy too.
Chris even did a great job of spreading the love amongst his fans, a feat most fantastically popular teen heartthrobs can't pull off. Before playing a cover of The Beatles' "I Want To Hold Your Hand," Chris told the audience to grab the hand of the person next to them, whether they knew them or not. Fingers intertwined, not clasped. Then he told the crowd to jump up and down with their held hands in the air during the chorus. And everyone did it. Again, it was all one big lovefest. With his flowers woven around his mic stand and an American flag with a peace symbol on it draped over the keyboard, Chris truly looked like a relic of the 60's. If his original songs weren't so good, I'd say he and The Shout would make a great 60's cover band.
And to end the set, Chris performed "Big City Dreams" and even got off the stage and down into the crowd. I couldn't really see where he went after that, but the message was pretty clear: even with his big new sound, his big new band, and his big new flower budget, he was still a small-town boy with some big-time love and appreciation for his fans.
The Veronicas
Before you read my review of The Veronicas' set, there are two things you should know:
One: I love The Veronicas. They may be identical twins, but they are two different girls with different styles and different personalities, and I respect their individuality. I just can't remember which is which.
So for the purposes of this review, I will somewhat callously refer to them The Blonde and The Brunette. But I know that they are two girls named Jess and Lis who record terrific pop songs, as well as the occasional adorable vlog.
But they suck at playing live.
Two: Before the concert, my friends and I indulged in several of the Inner Harbor's attractions, including ESPN Zone, pedal boats shaped like purple dragons, and the mall. While perusing the pricey but crazy hip clothing at Urban Outfitters, I happened upon a t-shirt that said "Little Black Dress" on it. I looked at it like a bouncer looks at a twelve year-old with a fake ID (not that I've ever seen that...) and held it up to see if it could really be worn as a dress or if it was just a t-shirt impostor. It covered all the essentials with less than an inch to spare, so I put it down, deciding that it had passed the test and was, in fact, a little black dress. But only a shameless skank would wear it without leggings underneath.
When The Veronicas came on stage, my friend started screaming something about a t-shirt. I was utterly confused until I saw that one of The Veronicas - The Brunette - was wearing the exact same Little Black Dress shirt I saw at Urban Outfitters.
Without leggings underneath. Shameless skank.
Though honestly, her outfit looked less risque than The Blonde's tank top with "Lick My Legs" scrawled on it. Ohhkayyy...
Describing a band's outfits before their music usually seems rather petty to me, but for The Veronicas, it seems to work: their show was mostly about show. Musically, they didn't sound stellar. They sounded good enough, but they didn't perform nearly as well as the other bands at the festival. But the other bands were really spectacular.
Last summer, I saw The Veronicas perform at Ram's Head Live on the Verizon VIP tour with Natasha Bedingfield and Kate Voegele. That time, again, they looked good - slightly skanky, with a few too many rips in their tights, but good... But they sounded awful. A bit like Alvin and the Chipmunks. Because they sound so good on their albums, I gave them the benefit of a doubt and chalked it up to problems with their sound equipment.
This time, like last time, they opened with "Untouched." One played an adorable miniature electronic keyboard while the other just sang. And this time, like last time, their voices sounded freakishly high-pitched and squeaky. Here we go again... Maybe it's not the sound equipment. Maybe those are just their voices.
That was a rather scary thought, but before the song was over, they quelled my fears: their voices started sounding normal in the middle of the song. And they continued to sound pretty good for the rest of the set.
But the best part of the set still wasn't the music; The Veronicas can sing pretty well, but they can work the stage like pros. Which I guess they are.
After "Untouched," they played the song "Everything," which doesn't appear on either of their albums. I think they've said in interviews that they love to play it because The Blonde plays electric guitar in it. And she played well, but she didn't sound nearly as good as she looked while rocking out with that guitar. She would have looked like a tough, grungy rocker chick, except the guitar looked like it weighed twice as much as that little waif.
If The Blonde looked like every rocker's dream playing that big ol guitar in her giant sunglasses, blonde bob, and short shorts, The Veronicas got the (very few) guys in the crowd even more excited during "Mother Mother." They screamed and leaned all over their guitarist, Jungle George, and got down on their knees and held other and lifted their legs and radiated sensuality. Remember the Hurley.com and Smartpunk stages at Warped Tour, one of which housed the screamo-dance bands, the other of which housed every female on the tour? With this song - screaming and gorgeous girls - they would've blown both stages away.
Plus, at Warped Tour, there might have been a bit of testosterone in the audience. Sunblock Music Festival was very heavily populated by girls - girls in love with Christopher Drew, girls in love with William Beckett, girls in love with Travis McCoy, girls in love with Martin Johnson, but mostly girls in love with all four. And a few boys in love with the girls who dragged them there. So there wasn't a whole lotta love for The Veronicas.
This indifference in The Veronicas was very evident during the song "Take Me on the Floor." The Veronicas introduced this song, explaining that it was a dance song, so they wanted to see everyone dance. If Christopher Drew tells you to jump, you jump. If Travis tells you to put your peace sign up, you put your peace sign up. If Martin tells you to go crazy, you go crazy. But if The Veronicas tell you to dance... eh, you don't really have to dance.
Although I must admit, I disagreed with their diagnosis of "Take Me on the Floor." The way they played it live, it wasn't so much a dance song as a jump-up-and-down song. But hey, I jumped... Besides, I could be on mtvU!
The Veronicas schooled the apathetic crowd in how to dance during "This Is How It Feels." Throughout the song, The Blonde jumped around and kicked her legs and shook her head like only a blonde-bobbed waif can. Needless to say she looked So Frickin Cool.
The Veronicas wanted to get the crowd into it. At this show and their concert last year, they accepted the fact that "4ever" is their only song Americans know. So both times, they saved it for last and invited the audience to sing along if they knew the words. Some audience members did. Nowhere near as many as knew the words to "Happy" by NSN, but a fair amount. Overall, their performance was not too shabby. Not nearly as shabby as The Blonde's ratty little tank top, anyways.
The Academy Is...
William Beckett has something The Veronicas needed (besides male anatomy): charisma. NSN may have given the best performance of the night, but William Beckett was the best performer. I thought The Veronicas knew how to work a stage, but he really knew what he was doing. And he was doing a lot. Throwing the mic stand. Lifting it up in the air. Standing on top of the speakers with his fist in the air. Standing on top of the speakers and staring intently at the audience. His set was like one big photo op: every five seconds, he doing something that looked iconic. In another life, he could've been a crazy demagogue.
Except his voice sounded kind of squeaky when he spoke. Not as high as Chris's, but it was weird, since his voice sounded freakishly deep when he introduced the remix of "Automatic Eyes" on Fall Out Boy's free mixtape. I don't know if that was the mic or just him... For the record, Martin sounded pretty high-pitched, too, but Travis didn't. Huh.
TAI's set opened with the spectacular rocker "Summer Hair=Forever Young." Love that song. And he never lost any steam, plowing through other high-energy should-have-been-hits like "Neighbors" and "His Girl Friday" without losing any steam. Watching Beckett's energy and listening to his crazy catchy hooks, I could not fathom how The Academy Is... had existed for so many years without becoming one of the most popular powerpop-punk bands around.
Near the end of their set, Beckett asked the audience who had seen The Academy Is... before. Big cheer. Then he asked whose first time it was. Cheer of roughly the same volume. He told us neophytes to put our hands in the air (Okay, he didn't use the word "neophytes;" I think he said "guys." Just trying to put those ol' vocab words to work here.) He welcomed us to the club and told us to keep our hands in the air while they played "We've Got a Big Mess on Our Hands." (By the end of the night, I could barely lift my arms after all this rocking out.)
When the set ended with "About a Girl," the energy in the pavilion could have powered the entire city of Baltimore. Or at least Pier Six's crazy loud speaker system. It was actually a bit of relief when the set ended. I was exhausted, but I couldn't stop myself from rocking out to every one of TAI's songs. They're too catchy for their own good.
Gym Class Heroes
The Veronicas may have been the misfits in the crowd's eyes (Jungle George and the other guys in the band just can't compete), Gym Class Heroes were the musical misfits. Before each set the DJs played a mixture of pop, pop-punk, and emo tunes - except before GCH's. This time, DJs got the crowd prepared for the dramatic shift from nonstop powerpop to chill alt hip-hop by playing other hip hop tunes. They sounded out of place at a concert full of girls in homemade Boys Like Girls and NSN shirts, but they were a welcome change.
Gym Class Heroes was the band at this show that I hadn't extensively listened to beforehand - of course I know "Cookie Jar" and "Cupid's Chokehold," but I hadn't listened any of their albums all the way through. Rap just isn't my thing, even when backed by guitars and a full band.
But much to my surprise, I thought GCH's set was the most enjoyable set of the night. It was so chill. Their music wasn't going at a mile a millisecond like TAI's, and unlike most of The Veronicas' tunes, it really was danceable. Also, being madly in love with Christopher Drew and William Beckett, and needing to show a little love for the underappreciated Veronicas, I felt like I needed to be the craziest dancer in the audience so that one of them would glance at me and know how much I adore them. But I didn't need to go crazy to show Travis what a dedicated fan I was because, well, I'm not a dedicated fan. So I was content to chill out and do my own thing, which was so much more fun than forcing myself to jump up and down through all the verses to outdo the kids who only jump during the choruses.
I think there is a valuable lesson here about being yourself and not trying to impress others, but I won't state it explicitly because that would just be too cheesy. This is a televised concert, not a Lifetime movie.
Travis didn't rock out or go crazy on stage like his predecessors - he was way too chill for that. The flashiest part of their set was a flag with their name on it that they waved during the first and last songs.
Oh, and the guy in the American flag shirt. That was pretty flashy.
They played all the essentials - "Cupid's Chokehold," "The Queen and I," "Peace Sign/Index Down" (everyone put up their peace sign but very few people continued to follow their instructions after that - would they have been allowed to air that on mtvU?) Before "Cookie Jar," Travis demonstrated his "power over the female species": He asked where the guys were. A few cheered enthusiastically, but compared to the night's other cheers, it was a mumble. THen he asked where his ladies were. Oh man. I'm gonna lose my hearing.
He repeated the exercise three times. The handful of guys cheered as loud as they could, but they couldn't lay a finger on the ladies' volume. And speaking of laying fingers on things...
"You know what this looks like to me?" Travis asked the fellows. "A big cookie jar!"
And he was so funny and he sounded so good, the song didn't even totally repulse like it usually does.
But the least repulsive song of the set - that is to say, my favorite song - was definitely "Guilty as Charged." Travis introduced the song by telling about his incident with the law and how much it taught him. He had just two words to say about it: "I'm... innocent!!!"
I gotta say, I loved Gym Class Heroes' set. Their low-key hip-hop was the perfect respite from all the thrashing guitars and hyperactive drummers in the preceding bands. And a great opportunity to catch my breath before things really got crazy...
mtvU's Oh-So Talented DJ
The guy who DJed this show really was cool. He kept us entertained without getting too cheesy - excluding a weird bit where he introduced The Veronicas by adopting a fake Australian accent and trying to scare the other DJ (who ruled the turntables) with a stuffed leopard. Umm, all right...
But this DJ has way more than plush toys up his sleeve. And before Boys Like Girls came on, the DJ gave us his very grand finale: a tribute to Michael Jackson.
The DJ expertly performed one of Michael Jackson's famous dances. This guy was great. He danced like a pro, sang pretty decently before introducing an earlier band, successfully and consistently got the crowd pumped by reminding them they could be on TV, and didn't tell lame jokes! I wish I could remember his name because as he deftly performed Michael's old moves, it became clear that he was one talented guy - a bit overqualified for his DJ job.
Or maybe he was perfectly qualified. As I said, mtvU knows how to throw a party.
Boys Like Girls
Even before they came onstage, it was clear that Boys Like Girls' set was going to be a little different. They were the headliners, after all, the closers - and they got quite a bit of special treatment. The stage, which had been littered with drum kits and speakers and who knows what else, was completely cleared for their performance (hey, more room for the DJ to dance like Michael). The sun had set before Gym Class Heroes began, but they hadn't really used any fancy lights for any of the performances.
But for BLG, they brought out the big guns. The lights changed - orange! purple! - as they ran on stage and performed their insanely catchy new single, "Love Drunk." The crowd went wild. Each member of BLG got his own platform to perform on, and they looked pretty darn awesome.
No doubt about it, BLG's set rocked. After "Love Drunk," they stuck almost entirely to songs from their self-titled debut album. "Five Minutes to Midnight," "On Top of the World," "Dance Hall Drug," "Heels Over Head," "Hero/Heroine"... I expected a mix of songs from their old album and the soon-to-be-released album Love Drunk (September 16th, who's pumped??!) but they only treated us to one new song: "HeartHeartHeartbreak."
Martin even gave us the whole cheesy speech about all the good things he's heard about Baltimore - how we're such hard partiers, how we'd never "stare at a new song like it's a painting" - and I guess the speech worked. He taught us the words to the chorus: "Now we're heading for a heart heart heartbreak/And I don't ever ever want to hear you say" - No, he does not continue with "I want it that way." But I expected him to. Every. Time. - "Don't say you loved me, don't even/Don't say you loved me, you're leaving."
You can check out a pretty good-quality video of the song from another show on their tour here.
The crowd was pretty into the song, although based on my experience listening to it afterwards on YouTube, it's one of those songs that doesn't seem too catchy the first time around but gets much better after a couple listens.
But the show certainly ended on a good note: for the last song, BLG's quintessential summer hit "The Great Escape," they invited the audience to join them onstage. In the mad dash for the stage, I got separated from my three friends - one of whom even sprained her ankle in the chaos! - and swept forward to the stage. I wasn't one of the hundreds of lucky ladies who made it onstage (by the time I got there, the security guards had woken up and got into position to stop us), but I was about two feet away and five feet below Paul. Then I got swept sideways to where Martin was giving out high-fives. When he high-fived me, my ring fell off, so I stayed where I was to look for it as he made his way to greet the fans at stage left. I was still searching when he and the crowd came back to center stage, so I got another high five. And a bracelet I found on the ground. Eh, I'll take it.
**Note: I've got a bunch of pictures and a few more tidbits about Martin's tongue action and some technical difficulties, but I'll have to post them later (since I'm kind of leaving for Italy for 10 days, like, right now)! Ttfn! :)
BEST CONCERT EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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