From Andrew Hime Sent Sun, Jul 18th 1999, 22:08
Okay, someone asked for a review of the show, and I aim to give you one. I'll warn you right now, some of the comments may be construed as negative, so those with weak hearts or those who look to be offended constantly may want to delete this now. It was pretty crowded, and through some twist of fate, we discovered shortly before the show that of myself and the 2 people I was with, 2 of us had Lower General Admission tickets. Yuh! First up was Lo-Fidelity Allstars. Saw them at Deep Ellum Live a few months back. Their set was pretty good, if a bit short. There were some technical difficulties. Also, I noticed from the first song on, the problem that ended up really dogging the show for me: the bass was TOO loud. Ys, this is possible. It was very distorted and dirty coming out of the speakers up close in the pit, and it detracted from the high end. Another problem with the Lo-Fis set was that the live drummer was lowest in the mix, followed closely by the bassist. The keyboardist on the left (in new Skint shirt - I was in old Skint shirt :) was up way high, and the scratching and vocals were up high too. Keyboardist on the right was probably in the middle. This kind of took the spark out of things for me. I could see the drummer doing his thing, but I couldn't hear it. My friend and I were pretty amused by the way the crowd reacted when they realized they were hearing "Battleflag". My friend hadn't heard anything more than that, but told me he really like "Kasparov's Revenge". Next up was Crystal Method - I sat down in the seats and tried to ignore them. Did a lot of math in my head to while away the time. Blah. Their songs aren't very exciting or interesting at 5 minutes... tedious and repetitive. Oh wait, a 10 minute version of High Roller/Busy Child/Keep Hope Alive? No thanks. It was during this set that people started crowd surfing. Really, grow up... Orbital - I have to say it up front. This was a full on disappointment. I saw them at Deep Ellum Live a few years ago, and the sound was much better, and they seemed to be more in tune with what they were doing. Here, the bass was still way too loud (to the point I kept fearing I might turd my pants cause someone would hit the magic frequency) and it didn't always seem to go along with the song they were doing. The visuals were excellent, in line with what they did last time but better. There was a lot of stuff flashing up on screen during "Sad But True" that made me laugh for its anti-commercialism value. Been listening to those old Crass records again? I couldn't help but be amused at the thought that Orbital is really a punk rock band that is too subtle for its own good. People crowd surfed during this while I was in the pit. Tried to get a shoe off somebody, but didn't manage it. Some day... The set list was good, but the version of "Style" they did was pretty bad. I mean, the first 5 minutes were going okay, but then the bassline got totally off from reality and was just incoherent. Them mixing "Bagpipe Style" into it was fun, but I couldn't enjoy it because half the song had no idea what it was doing. "The Box" was excellent, but then I just love that song, I'm not sure I could grasp the concept of a bad version of it. The encore was alright, but I'm starting to tire of the way everyone loves "Satan". It's an okay song, good groove, kinda funny, but geez... It was also fun to notice that 75% or more of the crowd had NO IDEA what the last two songs were... here's your hints, kids, the Dr. Who theme and "Chime". "Chime" was pretty good too. Other things - saw a few people I knew, had one guy recognize my Skint shirt and know what it was (finally! :). Overall, though, my 2 friends and I all kinda came away feeling like it really wasn't worth the $35ish we payed. A good light show will only carry you so far. For Lo-Fis and Orbital, I remain a fan, it was obviously not the best show for either of them and I can deal with that. Oh, and DJ John Kelley was pretty dull, I expected much better from what I know of his mix CDs. But then, I don't much like house music.