I’m not a fan of Major Lazer, even less so after their newfangled irony Peace Is The Mission, but they thrillingly entertained last night, albeit a show filled with blood, sweat, and musical lobotomy.
After attending mostly because of an eager friend, I wasn’t looking forward to the concert half as much as I would have if I was listening to congested traffic or someone eating a packet of crisps.
It usually tends to sound a bit like if masochism was a genre.
Ears bleeding, trampled on by men in zorbs and shot at by guns firing smoke into your blood-shot eyes while you scream with joy.
It’s fun though isn’t it? That’s the go-to justification. It’s all entertainment, as they say.
While the remixed versions of ice cream van jingles etch what’s left of the neurons in your depleting brain.
Major Lazer started as fans were already on a high, after a bout of tourettes by Novelist and I don’t even know what from a shrill Elliphant dressed like a character out of Pokémon.
Diplo, The Jillionaire, who has a jillion more pounds than Chamillionaire, and Walshy Fire, called for ‘When I say Major, you say Lazer’ responses roughly a million times.
I wondered if they had developed a severe case of dementia.
A number of highlights included all the worst parts.
A snippet of Get Free created the illusion of freedom, Watch Out For This (Bumaye) made dancers provocatively ‘wine’ while we drowned in the sound of child-like ‘pew’ sounds, and of course, Powerful.
Diplo and Jilly wore Manchester United and City tops respectively, which was a touching gesture to the city. It shows they care.
They got us to take our t-shirts off at one point because they probably realised that everyone was boiling in there.
Not because Diplo wanted to show that he’d done a bicep curl before.
But all in all, apart from the shoddy sound quality which wasn’t necessarily their fault, I have no criticism of the group simply because the crowd adored them and I knew I hated them from the start.
Image courtesy of Em Cecile, with thanks.
