On Saturday night, May 4th, a bunch of dudes pressed play on their iPods and people went crazy. And never in my life have I been so bored at a concert. I may not be the biggest fan of the EDM, or dance, or dubstep or whatever it’s called genre, but as I marched my way down to the football field where in four hours Rusko would finally hit the stage, I had an open mind about what I was going to see. I knew not to expect much of a musical experience. It’s not like the kind of EDM Rusko plays is meant to be music you listen to and appreciate. It’s meant to be something to dance your life away to. Needless to say, I wasn’t expecting much other than a good time. I got even less than I expected.
There are some crucial things I would like to say right now. First off, stacking four DJ’s on top of each other and having them all get on and off the stage without saying a word about who they are is a terrible idea. At one point I got into a conversation with a friend and when I turned back to the stage I realized Coyote Kisses had come onstage and started their set fifteen minutes ago with no introduction or break in the music. Another friend was absolutely baffled when I told her Rusko had been playing for five minutes.
Second, EDM is a ridiculously repetitive genre. On top of everything sounding like one song played continuously for four hours, DJ’s played the same songs multiple times. I can’t even recall how many times I heard the Austin Powers theme song fall into a massive drop. Ditto for A$AP Rocky’s Skrillex collaboration “Wild For The Night”.
Third, I don’t get EDM shows in general. This was my first time at a show like this and all I got from it is that it’s cool to dance in a big crowd, but I knew that already. Personally, I didn’t dance because the music played didn’t seem dance worthy, but then again based on the amount of kids who I heard saying they were on molly, maybe you need that to enjoy yourself at an EDM show? Then again, when you’re on drugs I think you can enjoy just about anything at all.
I don’t know what else there is to say about this concert. It was a show with so little spectacle and anything of interest going on that it baffles me that it’s something that is popular. The only thing that I think managed to be entertaining was just seeing the absurd stuff people did in the crowd. Other than that, all I see in an EDM show is something you can easily get at a house party with a large group of friends. Instead everyone had to pay ten bucks for this concert to recreate an experience most of us have every weekend. Sounds like a ripoff to me.