Who's the Champion?

On Thursday night I went to a concert with Joelle and Ian on campus. Three bands were playing, two of whom I had never heard their music and the last of which I had heard one song on the radio. So I didn't really know what to expect from the show. It started off a little poor due to the fact that the sound quality in the Lounge was pretty bad and they spent a long time doing sound-check. The doors were supposed to open at 7pm, however we didn't get in until 7:50 - needless to say the show started late and proceeded even later. However, we were patient and grabbed ourselves a beer in the beer garden and a good spot to view the show. The beer section, unfortunately, was to the far right of the stage, while the all ages section dominated the rest of the room, including in front of the stage. We watched the first act from the right of the stage, but because we had a good location we could see really well.

This first act was a band called "You Say Party! We Say Die!" and they totally impressed us. They were made up of the usual band components - drums, guitars, keyboard, singer - and they also had this funky funny little keyboard thing that I can't really describe. Their style is hard to describe - rock with traces of light punk - and their lead singer had a fabulously distinct voice, although her clothing would have landed her in a spot on 'Go fug yourself' (www.gofugyourself.com), which is my favorite fashion blog. She was wearing a white blouse with a high-waisted blue straight miniskirt. High-waisted is the problem, because it made her look like she had a paunch tummy, when I'm sure she had a perfectly normal body shape. In any case, their music mostly made up for her bad clothing, but I guess part of it is artistic freedom. She also wore a red mask over her eyes, that sort of looked like Robin's mask (you know, out of Batman and Robin).

In any case, after the first band we decided to go to the bathroom, however to get there we had to leave the beer section and would need to line up again to get back in. We left and just went to the all-ages section after that, which allowed us to get really close to the stage for the rest of the bands. The next band was a french band called "Malajube". I thought they were fine, but nothing special. I enjoyed their music but can't find anything noteworthy to write about them, except that they didn't seem to be able to speak any english and spoke to the predominantly anglophone crowd in french the whole time (even though there were a significant number of french people at the show).

The last band, the headliner, was the best by far, which I guess isn't surprising. DJ Champion has become quite popular in the last little while, and likely you've heard one of their songs on the radio before, even though you wouldn't know who the band was. DJ Champion isn't a DJ in the conventional sense, in that he doesn't simply spin techno hits out and play with the beat of songs already written. DJ Champion started off his show with a couple laptops and his mixing board and began spinning the beats. After a few minutes, he called on the first guitarist, who came on stage and upon DJ Champion's signal, started playing his guitar with the beats. Next came on the second guitarist, who subsequently joined in, deepening the quality of the music. And so forth until all five guitarists were on stage. The band played for an hour and 15 minutes straight, without any breaks between songs but just transitioning between them. DJ Champion was almost a conductor, coordinating the guitarists with handsignals to let them know what they were to play next. It was just fantastic! Lastly, they had a female singer who accompanied them for half the songs and had a very distinct voice. All in all, it was super fun and we danced for the whole time!