Girl Talk, The Death Set & Passion Pit @ Metcalf Hall (BU), 9.20.08

In between each of their songs The Death Set had samples of popular songs played over the PA. Artists such as Lil’ Wayne and MIA were broadcast to the audience to keep everyone’s energy up while the band retools for their next song. One fellow concert goer, fed up with The Death Set and itching for Girl Talk managed to shout in a fit of frustration a seemingly clever quote - at least by his own estimation. He yelled, for all to hear:

Play your own music!

Sublime irony.

I think it’s important to take a step back to understand how a sentiment so misguided could be uttered at a Girl Talk show. So, from the beginning…

The event was sponsored by the Boston University Student Activities Office and Programming Council (PC). Tickets were $5, only sold to BU students and available to only about 1,500 of the school’s population. BU has about 16,000 undergrads and 13,000 grad students. Undergrad tuition is $36,540 (excluding room, board, and fees) per year. Basically, that boils down to a concert with a group of “elites” within a larger group of “elites” in relation to the general population. I use the term elite to denote exclusivity rather than superiority.

I arrived at the George Sherman Union (GSU) at 9:30pm (doors were at 9pm) and the line was four people wide and already stretched out of the GSU and passed the library (at least 150 feet long). Everyone had to show their BU IDs several times and were forced to remove all items from their pockets (although my bag was not checked). Alcohol and lighters were confiscated. Bendable glow sticks were given out en masse and everyone was decked out in their hippest of wears - “Kanye” shutter shades were common, headbands were everywhere, and if it wasn’t tight or shiny, you should have left it at home. Everyone took it upon themselves to gear up for the event, which helped to make the proceedings feel special, or at least different from a normal concert.

Once inside students pushed to the front ready to pounce on the stage upon hearing the first Girl Talk hook, but did not anticipate having to listen to Passion Pit and The Death Set in order to do so.

Student members of PC fumbled through an introduction of Passion Pit while pleading with the crowd to take “two giant” steps back. They were like nerdy dads futily begging a stubborn dog to get in the car. On several occassions they took to the tactic of ultimatums, offering the empty threat of a cancelled concert.

Passion Pit took the stage to a chorus of unwarranted “boos.” A particularly oafish student to my right declared he was “too drunk to listen to anything but Girl Talk,” and “fuck these guys!” But Passion Pit took the jeers in stride - dropping “fucks” as many times as possible - a tried and true practice to sedate the youth. “Fuck” is a word that stinks with false rebellion. Passion Pit did the best they could, but ultimately couldn’t really capture the attention of the audience. BU wanted Girl Talk and nothing else.

Unfortunately (or fortunately) The Death Set would fair even worse.

When The Death Set began their set the crowd was growing increasingly unhappy and the prospect of listening to an unfamiliar punk band was not enticing. A division had been created between the bourgeois audience and the proletariat musicians. The bourgeoisie had their king and he was Gregg Gillis and he was suppossed to protect them from the ungainly ideas and stench put forth by The Death Set. Had the PC and/or Gregg Gillis never read Hobbes? Wasn’t their function purely to protect them?  They didn’t dispose of their $5 to hear new music, but rather for their ideas of ‘the scene’ to be defended and reaffirmed by Girl Talk and his frenetic mashing of their pop culture.

The crowd almost unanimously decided to reject The Death Set, even when Greg Gillis joined the band on stage. So strong was their disdain for the band that I was angrily questioned as to why I would ever cheer for a band such as them.

An unspoken session of groupthink resulted in the conclusion to instantly dismiss the intoxicating energy that The Death Set brought to the stage. People chose to turn their heads away from the undeniably fun time Death Set, their friends, and Passion Pit were having on stage. (If they literally turned their heads they risked being blindsided by one of Johnny Siera’s sneakers.) The crowd even chose to poo-poo a cover of Op Ivy’s Bombshell (which I was sure would get more people going, but perhaps those a few years younger than I never had Energy passed down from older brothers and traded amongst friends).

People were so repulsed they launched middle fingers and boos into the air when people threw delightfully cool water onto them. It was startling to see such indignation.

By the time the band had finished their set everyone else wanted, as a guy next to me said, “someone with talent,” while I wanted more Death Set.

That’s why a review of Saturday’s Girl Talk set would be perfunctory. By the time he went on it was like shooting kittens squeezed in a vice.

Rest assured, everyone was happy that he played his own music.

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