Halifax Pop Explosion | Day 4 | MSTRKRFT

I'd hide my face too if I was that bad

The worst show of my life. Unequivocally. No contest. Without a doubt. That's how bad MSTRKRFT at The Palace was on Friday night. Fuck needing notes (but not really, I'll be using them), that concert will stay fresh in my mind for how historically and wholly bad it was on every level.

So it started off like this: I get to The Palace at about 11pm, thinking I'd slot in comfortably haflway through the five-act set. In front of me was the biggest line I've seen for the venue since the last time they had "dollar drinks" for sale, November 10th of last year. I saw a few of the same faces from the last two nights, so I was hoping the rest of the crowd wouldn't be the usual Palace set, or all-too-eager band-wagoners who decided to come get sloshed to a concert featuring possibly the one name they knew on the Halifax Pop Explosion's vast roster of acts. Sadly, I would be proved wrong on all counts throughout the night.

The place was already packed when I got in following my 20 minute plus wait, and Double A was still spinning more than half an hour after Scientists Of Sound were supposed to be on stage. That was an early indication of how the night would be trending. I "snuck" up front, which basically involved swimming my way through what was a crush of people packed into the smallish dancefloor. Double A's music was nothing special at all, as I spent more time focusing on keeping my arms up so I wouldn't get smothered than I did on whatever the hell he was playing up there. The amount of pushing and shoving was just ridiculous, as was the amount of drinking that was going on. I already knew The Palace was going to make a killing that night, but getting in and seeing just how much people were drinking and how many of them were already drunk, I had to seriously reconsider not only The Palace's profitability from a night like this, but also the prospect of me actually sticking around to see if it was worth it.

I could tell people weren't there to see MSTRKRFT, let alone anyone else on the bill that night. I'm a MSTRKRFT fan from what I've heard of them, but I knew it would be a tough show when many of their best songs are remixes of other people's work, as well as tracks featuring acts who have neither the time nor the need to tour along with them and provide vocals (see: "Bounce" featuring Thunderheist's Isis and N.O.R.E. as well as big hit "Heartbreaker" with John Legend). As that was the case, I was glad to see Scientists Of Sound were also performing, due to the great show they put on in opening for Thunderheist at The Paragon in September. Anyway, try relaying any of the above to the people packing the floor on Friday night: they seemed like they didn't give two shits about who was playing that night -- they just wanted to get drunk and maybe dance.

And don't get me wrong: I don't think there's anything wrong with that. What I do think is wrong is if you're already charging about $40 to see MSTRKRFT play, oversell the venue, keep everyone waiting in line while you pat down all the guys going in, treat the whole thing like it's just another night at your sketchy downtown bar, and generally mishandle the thing so badly that I was seriously considering leaving the show at multiple points during the night. And I mean multiple as in: within ten fucking minutes of showing up, and every ten minutes after that. Why I stuck it out? The misguided principles of "journalistic duty," the perverse notion of "at least I can say I saw MSTRKRFT live," and what seemed like the most reasonable: "I just wanna see if they're any good live." All horrible excuses when I was having as little fun as I was.

Scientists Of Sound eventually got on stage, and they eschewed standing behind the incomprehensible "DJ stand" that was basically a stomach-high bar, embossed with a "MOLSON" decal missing the "N." You were lucky if you could even see whatever was on whoever was up there's t-shirt if they stood behind it. In lieu of that monstrosity, they set up on the right-hand side of the stage, synths and keyboards and laptops stacked on makeshift tables, looking similar to the last time I saw them. Except this time, there was nowhere near the pitch-perfect and crystal-clear sound I'd heard at The Paragon from them, or even the full-sounding acoustics The Weakerthans had played with at the only other concert I'd ever attended at The Palace.

Either the crowd was so damn noisy or the sound system so badly tuned, that I probably would've never bothered checking out Scientists Of Sound again had I not heard them that initial time. Just a real letdown, and the only person who seemed to enjoy it was a guy up on stage who was so drugged out that he stared wide-eyed and in amazement at the duo throughout their entire set, somehow flabbergasted that these two were making the kinds of noises they did with the instruments at hand.

That wasn't the strangest site either that night. There were other random people on the stage throughout the night, sometimes photographers, sometimes friends of the bands, the occasional lush, and most disconcertingly, a guy who I can only imagine is The World's Biggest Douchebag, rocking a completely out-of-place dress coat over a pink polo with its collar popped. That's not even to mention the poor girl who was dancing for about half an hour on-stage with her nipple hanging out, before some kind girl on the opposite end of the floor waved her over and pointed out her embarrassing wardrobe malfunction. Just a weird, messed-up night.

After Scientists Of Sound, the last opener Kay Gee came on, and you could tell the crowd was getting restless, as no one seemed into his set whatsoever. In my eyes and ears, the only good thing he did for however long he was up there was play Breakbot's remix of PNAU's "Baby" and Fred Falke's reworking of Little Boots' "New In Town" (both featured earlier last week right here on IATT as it happens).

In between the sets though, I should mention that z103, the local "Beat of Halifax," had one of their staff members MC'ing  the event, and introducing the upcoming acts. I like z103, and it's the only local station I listen to when I bother wanting music on the radio here. But for the love of all that's good: fuck off with promoting the upcoming drink and cover specials when we've been waiting in a sweaty mass of people for the last hour to hear some freaking MSTRKRFT. We could care less about what he was talking about, and it got to the point that the second time I saw him come up, the crowd was startling to heckle him and tell him to "fuck off!" quite plainly. It's the Halifax Pop Explosion, it's MSTRKRFT, we're paying good money, 75% of us are drunk, the show's behind by more than a half-hour, you're boring, you're holding us up, and you're not telling us anything we want to hear. Shut up.

The worst part of z103 sponsoring and MC'ing the night? They don't played a damned bit of anyone performing. That might actually qualify them as the worst bandwagon-jumpers of anyone on Friday. Anyway, it got so bad after Kay Gee kept his set going that we were starting to shout him down as well, with calls of "you! still! suck!" and "mas-ter-kraft!" All in all, the kid seemed a little too excited to be there, and just a tad nubile. Plus between him and Double A, neither was doing anything different than a regular DJ would at your local club, except maybe play a set that's not quite as radio-heavy as they tend to be here around Halifax.

Scientists Of Sound on MySpace

By the time Kay Gee was done his set, I was able to nudge and generally "work" my way up to second or third row from the front, hoping to get away from the sway and the crush near the middle of the floor. As luck would have it, it only got worse once I was up there: I was so tightly squeezed between people that I felt the breath being sucked out of me at points, and I heard similar complaints all around me of people having problems even catching a breath. Even between all the pushing and shoving on its own, I saw two fights almost break out, and if I wasn't being subjected to the radius of the guy's voluminous dreadlocks in front of me, I was involuntarily invading the personal space of the two raging lesbians having a mid-concert make-out session beside me.

Finally, MSTRKRFT showed up to a roar of pleasure from the crowd...and I was gone in ten minutes. No lie. I got fed up with the now-even-more rabid crowd, and it was still at the unfathomable point where I was more concerned with my bodily safety and not getting hit in the face with a glancing elbow than I was with paying attention to the music. The last straw was when I realized Jesse and Al were doing no different than anyone else had that night: setting up behind the MOLSO bar and stoicly playing with their laptops in an effort to try to amp up the overtired crowd. I either didn't know it before, or I should've, but MSTRKRFT - at least live - aren't the expert mix-masters they come off as, but instead simply glorified DJ's.

In an effort to salvage the night, I texted my friends who I knew were frequent Palace VIP, hoping they had showed up and could possibly show me a better time now that the music part of the night had let me down. It turned out they were just showing up to the club, and we ended up having some drinks, stuck around for a mostly forgettable listen to the majority of MSTRKRFT's (what I found out later would be three-hour) set, and danced a little bit to the strains of "Bounce" and some other unrecognizable electro. Even when they threw in a remix of "D.A.N.C.E." you barely felt the place pick up, as close to 70% of the people at The Palace were having drinks and talking to their friends, not on the crush of the dancefloor "enjoying" the show.

People overcharge for a lot of things these days. Gas. Popcorn at the movies. Cell phones. Add MSTRKRFT to that list. Definitely not worth the price of admission, let alone the time of my life I wasted on Friday hoping the night would turn out for the better at some point.