Skrillex: Stubb's: 10/10/14

If you have been reading my other posts, you'll know that I have been excited about seeing Skrillex.  I still couldn't tell you what the hell the difference is between dubstep and techno or EDM or whatever else name this stuff has been given, but I freaking love Bangarang.  One more time!

However, I wanted to go see Eminem play the Saturday night of ACL 2014, so I knew I was going to have to miss out on Skrillex's show.  Until my friend Joseph scored us a pair of tickets to go see him at Stubb's outdoor for the second weekend of ACL.  Both of us were pretty pumped, and I spent a large part of that Friday playing the new album (Recess) to get myself all ready to go.

And it was lame.  So lame.  I think the underlying reason is that I just don't do the drugs like the kids these days.  The only way that the people around me could have been as excited as they were by this concert is if they were doing the ecstasies or Molly or freebasing bathsalts or whatever.  This concert consisted of Skrillex hitting buttons on his control panel to play songs, and then doing his best to pump up the crowd by pumping his fists or shooting finger guns or yelling super original things like "Whats up AUSTIN!?!" or "get your hands UP AUSTIN!!"  Multiple times during the show he would step up onto his control console thing and try to hype us up or get us to clap together.  

This is not from Austin, but you can catch a flavor of what the guy is doing and what people on all the drugs look like.

In case you want to know, dubstep is defined as a genre of EDM that originated in South London and generally features syncopated drum and percussion with prominent sub bass frequencies.  Reading about it hurts my head.  The stylistic origins noted on Wikipedia are reggae, dub, grime, 2-step garage, drum and bass, and breakstep.  Uh, reggae?  I'm not a huge reggae guy or anything, but No Woman No Cry did not spawn Skrillex.  And no one has ever heard of those other styles of music. Someone in their parent's basement in Cleveland just made that stuff up to confuse old people like me.  

I was hopeful that Joseph was going to give me a glowing review of the show, because he was hammered with pre-plans for a cab ride, and that would support my theory that I needed to be in a different mind-set to have enjoyed the show.  No such luck.  A random sampling of some of his texts from after the show: 

• "Not gonna lie... Awful" 
• "Unless you are high and 18"
• "I'm going to eat some tacos and go home"
• "It's much worse than you and I mixing a show" [which really can't be true.  I wouldn't even have the first clue how to torture synthesizers and drum machines into making those noises]
• "But serious.  Wtf was that show?"

As well as some fun auto-correct entries like "Syrah" and "I marry."

Thinking back on the show, I think it had all of the pieces I was expecting.  Ridiculously loud and deep bass (thank God I brought ear plugs.  I am sooo old).  Some of the popular songs I had heard before, plus a few other ones incorporating current rap hits that were kind of fun. A huge sweaty crowd, almost exclusively under 30, filming every second on their phone so they can watch it over and over again (I guess?  Weirdos).  So I'm not really sure what my problem was, but I just didn't feel the hype or excitement once I was standing there among the crowd.  Glad I gave it a shot.  No need to try to see him again.