Friday night the boyfriend and I went out to Fat City to check out Tigersushi label head and notorious electro disco remixer Joakim, and to also see blog house darlings Glass Candy. It was a strange night out where many of our expectations were disappointed.
First, we had been looking forward to seeing Pee Play’s video installation/deconstruction of the homo classic Cruising, but when we got there Ken Vulsion told us that Pee Play had come down with a bad case of flu, so Jason Kendig was substituting. Jason played a very smooth set with a vintage disco feel that got the crowd from standing around with drinks in their hands to fairly widespread dancing – I even saw Josh Cheon and Robot Hustle in the crowd with their hands in the air. I think Jason was having a good time as well, but his facial expression was virtually inscrutable – he and Samim would run a close contest for most stern DJ face I’ve seen this year.
Glass Candy came on around 11.30 and immediately endeared themselves to the crowd when chanteuse and interpretive dancer Ida No said “hey, let’s thank DJ whats-his-name” before launching into a track that began with the lyrics “Look at me.” That seemed to be the whole point of their performance; if you watched the stage it seemed that the entire focus of the show was Ida’s various stage gyrations, and if you turned your back and didn’t watch it sounded like overwrought sturm-und-drang signifying very little. Afterwards I thought it appropriate that two of the videos on their myspace were of their tracks being played for runway shows at fashion week.
When Joakim finally came on at 12.30 it felt less like the performance of a headliner and more like the clean-up brigade. We had hoped to hear some original tracks or remixes, but instead he just played records. We only stayed for about another half hour, so he might have taken off in other directions after that, but when he put on a remix of Khia’s “My Neck, My Back” (a song I have truly grown to loathe) I decided I really wasn’t interested in hearing where things went from there.
When I looked back at the event listing on the Blasthaus website, I realized that it said “Joakim, with a live set by Glass Candy,” which should have been the tip-off that we were going to get a DJ set rather than an actual performance. Nonetheless, when you’re charging $15 at the door for a party, and you have a “headliner” of that stature playing, I would think that you would give him the more appropriate headliner time-slot and have him do something besides spin records. As it was I felt like I paid $15 to go a Glass Candy show, which was about $10 too much.
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