Review: Mad Decent Tour in Philadelphia
Diplo, Boy 8-Bit, Abe Vigoda highlight of show at Starlight Ballroom
Nov 22, 2008
Tables littered with free pizza - and more seeming to arrive all the time - should have been indicator enough that this was no typical engagement. Add to that the fact that the bill itself was a mixture of bands, DJs, and Producers and things were bound to get a little weird.
This was not going to be some warehouse party, this was not going to be some basement show with amps turned up too loud, this was not going to be a pizza party for hipsters, this was not going to be some dance music snob's wet dream, this was going to be all of them.
Abe Vigoda
One of the night's early acts was LA's Abe Vigoda. This four-piece had been in Philly not long ago opening for noise-rockers No Age and, whether a testament to their ability to cross genre boundaries or just the fact that there were already hundreds of empty drinks at this point, they seemed to please the dance kids just as much as they had the avant-garde indie set from the No Age show.
Songs like "Dead City Waste Wilderness" and "Bear Face" got the crowd moving, even if there was some confusion over how to dance to the squeaky wind-chime-meets-steel-drum guitar tones and scattered drumming.
At times the band's songs seemed to devolve too much into prickly chaos and a subdued stage presence didn't help the issue. But hey, those were perfect moments to grab a slice of pizza.
Boy 8-Bit
Things got back to the hip-shaking business once Boy 8-Bit took the stage. The DJ's set seem divided between up-tempo club-bangers with the sort of bass that thumps the chest just as hard as the ears, and more introspective (at least as introspective as you can get while crammed in with a bunch of sweaty dance-fiends) laid-back electro. At one point the beat hit the audience like a siren's call and the stage was soon filled with dancers.
You may not have been able to see Boy 8-Bit at this point, but you could still hear him as he waxed comically on the situation yelling in the microphone, "Girl Talk was two months ago!" His reference to that artist's penchant for rowdy shows with a packed stage raised celebratory shouts from an already-hyped up crowd.
Diplo
Despite entertaining sets by the openers, it was Diplo who stole the show. Maybe the guys dancing in a hot dog costume and pizza slice costume were cheap ploys to score extra points, but they worked.
Diplo may be more well-know for his connections to M.I.A. than anything else - he once dated M.I.A., gained massive critical acclaim for his remix of her first album which he titled Piracy Funds Terrorism, and produced her recent mega-hit "Paper Planes" - but at The Starlight Ballroom he showed not only why he was headlining this tour, but also why he's been a staple of the DJ scene for years now.
His set was a frenzied crowd-pleaser that had to have raised the temperature in the room more than a few degrees. The stage was filled quickly, giving the hot dog and pizza slice a little competition, but they didn't seem to mind. His transitions were tight, while his song selection never seemed to hit a dull patch. You would think after so many openers some of the crowd would have been read to play wallflowers, but instead things become more energized.
Sure, maybe Diplo's constant shout outs to Philly got a little old (the guy does call the City of Brotherly Love home) but like the way a whole city can bask in the success of a sports team, you could tell everyone in attendance was proud to call Diplo their own.
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