Why can’t Sunday be a day of merriment? Seriously. Why can’t we go into work, a bit achy but armed with anecdotes for the chipper people who decided to watch a movie? It was with this frame of logic as my guide that I decided to rechristen Sunday. And while the good boys and girls were at home, keeping their bodies safe from the night, I was at the Crystal Ballroom in the middle of a hot, sweaty dance party.
But first, a history lesson. Pretty Lights came into my life through research. Good ol’ fashioned research during my Bonnaroo set-picking process. Of all the bands I flipped through on the iTunes music store that day, this is the one that stood out. I fell in love with the way Derek Vincent Smith (who is Pretty Lights) blended soul, electro, and golden-era hip-hop beats into a body-high inducing, textural treat for my ears. I was hooked, and started the process of telling my friends. But there was another contingent that gave me the dead eyes when I told them I was going to see them and that got me to wondering . . . would there be a fan base in Portland? Were they too Internet?
I wasn’t dissuaded when I walked into the Crystal Ballroom and no one was there. The faucet was dripping, but there was no gushing. I was getting images of a lone dancer awkwardly trying to make up the difference for the Colorado native, and besides making me laugh, I hoped against it. Musically, we started with DJ Rootz. He was a slightly nerdy-looking guy wearing an Atmosphere t-shirt, all alone on the side of the stage. He didn’t have a microphone and didn’t look like the type that would shout out loud even if he did. What he spun wasn’t bad though. Let’s call it a mix of hip-hop, techno, and house, and while initially he didn’t get any takers, by the time his set was ending, a gaggle of gigglers were putting their hands up near the front of the stage. He left, still silent.
Before he walked, he was joined on stage by an Elvis-admiring member of Chicharones who locked into his groove, catching the torch as it was passed. This was one of the best parts of the show: the music didn’t stop. You might have had to wait for the main acts, but you didn’t have to wait to dance. That invitation was open to you all night long, and as the kids started to filter in—squashing my earlier bout of apprehension—they made use of their time, creating space on the floor for their footwork and finding friends with which to share it.
Sometime during the Chicharones’ entrance strut, their DJ donned an elaborate pig mask and spent the rest of the show blessed with the concert chainmail known as antic interest. While the mask might have been a sufficient enough eyebrow popper to carry him through until the end unscathed by boredom, he decided it served him better to up the ante with spastic body movements and wild hand gestures in between record cuts. Later, I found out that the pig mask tied into a hog theme running throughout the Chicharones catalog; does that make them the swine crew? Sorry about that, it just came out.
The rest of the group was made up of a live drummer, a bassist, and two MCs (Josh Martinez and Sleep of Oldominion). Their sound was a hip-hop hybrid, which included touches of alternative, a taste of pop, and dab of soul. Well, soul of the “We’re just playin'” variety. And this crew let us know they were here to party right from the get-go. Hell, they even showed up in vintage tuxedo shirts, each one with a collar that said this was about to be Sunday Night Fever if that’s what the crowd wanted. And they did.
When there was rapping, it was in the trade-off style that the Beastie Boys (for easy reference) like to employ. Sleep and Martinez effortlessly threw it back and forth, echoing each other’s good lines without that “I don’t know how to use a microphone” hype man routine you get from the randoms prevalent on most hip hop stages. If I had to throw out a comparison, the most obvious one would be to A Tribe Called Quest. Martinez, for one, is a vocal dead ringer for Q-Tip, and stylistically it’s not like it’s a leap of faith to saddle him with a bit of cadence jack either. But hey, for me, being compared to Q-Tip is a huge compliment, as he’s easily in my top 5 favorite rappers of all time. So thumbs up to you, Josh.
The crowd ate it up and liked them enough to indulge them in something that is a true gauge of crowd approval: the voluntary call and response. The band made it easy on them by bringing along easily readable note cards for their new fans to shout out. I caught the words “Late Night” and “Knife Fight” as they flew by, recalling (probably unintentionally) the famous opening to the Dylan documentary Don’t Look Back. It was fun, as were the fake doo-wop hand gestures and purposefully awful soul crooning when they sang their fuck-off anthem to a girl. They left soon after, and again, there was DJ Rootz.
This time he came out swinging, playing more intense, bass-thumping music. Gone was the house and in was the techno remixes of pop tracks including a take on Robin Thicke’s “When I Get You Alone” and what I’m pretty sure was a Justice rip. The crowd was finally on his side, using their sweat glands and—for some people—about 2/3 of the floor (I’m talking about the e-tards). His second set was longer, and it probably didn’t hurt his feelings that Pretty Lights came on late. But when they came on, so did the lights, and the giant LED screen that had been taunting us with possibility throughout the opening sets finally caught some juice and turned where everyone was standing into a day-glo paradise.
The LED twinkled orange and blue around the giant P and L that make up the Pretty Lights logo. The crowd went nuts and the screen talked back with starbursts of color, fluttering around the digital canvas. In time, Derek Vincent Smith and his live band-mate, drummer Cory Eberhard (who added serious power to the tracks), assumed their positions on stage; the true masters of ceremonies. What happened next was the bass went boom and inhibitions went flying. From the rim of the stage to the far recesses of the venue, bodies thrived in the rhythms. Arms became paintbrushes, tracing their strokes upon the air and legs became fluid entities of their own, finding the space between the beat drop as a fertile playground for a Sunday version of groove therapy. Well, for half of them anyways. The other half looked like the cast-offs in a “So You Think You Can Dance” marathon. But who cares? Grace is cool, but it’s better to participate than ride a bench amongst momentarily free spirits.
Smith knew he had them from the beginning and milked it for all it was worth, ramping up the tension before he delivered the slam. His fader hand was like a king’s scepter: when it moves, you move. And behind him, the LED screen keep humming, bouncing to and fro between rapidly multiplying cubes, London traffic, snowflakes, and all other sorts of digital imagery. Some graphic designer probably had a field day coming up with this set-up, and the color was vivid enough to make your eyes bleed. One minute you’d be entranced by an electric blue, the next you’d be staring into a hellfire red as the screen flipped from a landscape to sharp lines, dancing along with the music. It’s something that you write home about and I’m positive that friends around the Portland area got calls the next day chiding them for choosing sleep over dance steps.
And although Pretty Lights made sure that they lived up to that name, it would have been a cheap trick without the music. What was once a distinct friend in my headphones roared to life in a fleshed-out body. On wax, Smith is equal parts mellow head-nod and engaging party starter, but live, he told mellow head-nod that it should call him tomorrow. Smith was interested in one thing and one thing only: bringing the house down. Electronic synths were married with strings, bar-room piano lines and soul-singing voices that floated out into the audience like lost spirits out to tell their secrets. On the track “Finally Moving,” Ella James told the audience she had a good feeling over a summery William Bell groove (“Private Number”). The crowd told her they agreed by continuing their nonstop dance off.
Which made me realize that a dance/electro/hip-hop show might be the only thing that can bring all the different groups together. Sometimes when I go to shows I get so used to the hipster wearing a thick sweater in the summer or the frat boy slurring his words before holding back the vomit that I forget that they can all cohabitate. Here was the proof. Little children with red headphones on dancing with their mothers, full track-suit wearing b-boys, old people, high schoolers, hippies, all dancing as one. I quickly saw that I not only misjudged the attendance possibilities in the first place, I completely missed the boat on the Portland fan-base all together. I’m once again proud of my city. I love it here.
I didn’t get to see the end because I had an early morning meeting, but from the time sheet in the back, I think I only missed the last 20 mins. My luck, it turned into a crazy orgy and the wildest things that man or woman has ever seen went down, and I missed it, depriving you of this knowledge. But my guess is that Derek Vincent Smith and Cory Eberhard dropped one more furious beat and sent those kids home happy. I know I can be counted as one of the happy, and I’m telling you, when they come back, take some friends and go. You’ll leave happy too.
P.S. You can download all of their albums for free at their website: http://www.prettylightsmusic.com
