Concert Report

Milan Trivedi

Concert Report #1

The concert that I attended for this report was on Valentine’s day (February 14) in San Diego, CA. The name of the event was “Anniversary V” and it was an electronic dance music concert. I attended because my sister and my wife wanted to go. Electronic dance music isn’t generally my cup of tea. I learned about the main event, an EDM duo named “Showtek” from my wife and heard some songs on youtube just to know what I was getting myself into. Upon arriving at the venue, I noticed that I was much older than the majority of the crowd very naïve when it came to this genre of music. The event began with an opening act, a local DJ who played a mix that was about ten minutes long. Although I enjoyed the first few minutes as well as the moment the “beat drops,” I found myself much less excited than the majority of the audience. I almost felt like a dad attending an event for his kids. The performers were constantly mentioning how amazing the sound and acoustics were in the venue, but I failed to noticed the sound quality and only noticed how painfully loud the music was and how the bass shook my insides and left me with a bit of a headache.

The second act was the main event, the electronic dance music duo Showtek who apparently have a large cult following, likely because of the internet and recent emergence of this genre into the mainstream. The group came out and the crowd was cheering, girls were screaming, and everyone was waiting for the music to begin. This duo specializes in “live mixing” where they take suggestions from the crowd about which loops and songs to mix and then perform a mix in real time. This was the highlight of the show for me, the group mixed Marvin Gaye’s “What’s going on” with a Swedish House Mafia song, and the result was pretty impressive. Once the mixing was complete, the group moved onto performing their famous tracks (whose names I can’t recall). To be honest, the music sounded more like someone one would hear at a gym, but the crowd would most definitely disagree with my take on it.