Diplo at Great Scott, February 23, 2008
By MEGAN V. BELL | February 26, 2008
![diplo_cover[1]inside](http://cache.thephoenix.com/secure/uploadedImages/The_Phoenix/Music/Live_Review/diplo_cover[1]inside.jpg "diplo_cover[1]inside")
Diplo |
I’m white and from rural Connecticut, so I think Saturday night was the closest I’ve ever come to anything resembling a block party. Maybe it was because we all knew we were very lucky: the Diplo show had been sold out for weeks, and Great Scott was twice as packed as I’d ever seen it. Big Digits, a three-man DJ/dance/hip-hop group from Cambridge, got some people moving from the get-go, but the anticipation of the main act was palpable, especially since Diplo could be seen all night next to the stage. After an interlude from DJs Etan and Die Young of the increasingly popular local collective Basstown, DJ Sega took the stage with a remix of the Gorillaz’ “Feel Good Inc.,” and the energy built steadily. Sega, if his name doesn’t give it away, has a penchant for sampling from nerdy sources — cartoons, video games, Jeopardy!, alternative hip-hop, even “Smells like Teen Spirit.” My guess is he watches a lot of Adult Swim.As we heard the clarion call of Van Halen’s “Eruption,” Sega motioned for everyone to join him on stage, and chaos ensued as people scrambled to oblige. A video projection draped everyone in neon blues and greens and yellows and then, as if this were a magician’s vanishing act, Sega disappeared and was replaced by Diplo. Things just heated up from there — maybe everyone was just wasted (it was well after midnight by that point), but people forgot who they came with and were talking and laughing and dancing as one big group. Diplo’s set was diverse but not too obscure: of note was 2 Live Crew’s “Face Down, Ass Up” over Fischerspooner’s “Emerge” and remixes of Dead Prez and Eurythmics. But Diplo must have been lonely on the road, because the artist he most frequently called on was ex-girlfriend M.I.A. No complaints from the crowd.
Related:
Basstown throwdown, Mixed, nuts, Photos: Major Lazer, A-Trak, Matt and Kim, More 
- Basstown throwdown
Although we’re still shivering in the icy depths of winter, things are heating up for Basstown Productions.
- Mixed, nuts
If you thought Diplo peaked with Hollertronix or plateau’d with M.I.A. or repeated himself with Santogold, you really need to stop thinking and go dancing or something.
- Photos: Major Lazer, A-Trak, Matt and Kim
Bacardi B-Live Tour | June 18, 2009 at House of Blues Boston
- Major Lazer | Guns Don't Kill People . . . Lazers Do
Producer-centric pop music of the last decade or three has, so the argument goes, made mainstream America's airwaves more diverse by pushing an inclusive mixtape æsthetic onto the great unwashed. So a fake-band album by Diplo and Switch, two of the more well-renowned DJ/producers around, should be gangbusters, right?
- Review: Fig Trees
Here's a first: an AIDS documentary nested inside an opera that's obsessed with albino squirrels, figs, palindromes, and Pythagoras.
- Yankee Doodle Cohan
The hipsters ambling past the new George M. Cohan bust at the corner of Wickenden and Governor streets this week seemed more concerned with ducking out of the July rain than gazing upon statuary.
- From Jester to Esther
During the presidential campaign last fall, the Phoenix took note of a curious undercurrent in the annals of Sarah Palin fandom: the notion of Palin as a modern-day Queen Esther.
- Face off
If you were an ordinary Catholic boy in parochial school, giving nuns as hard a time as you were getting, you probably ended up with the usual stories of ruler-rapped knuckles. If you grew up to be talented playwright John Patrick Shanley, you ended up writing Doubt: A Parable , a fascinating exploration of the quicksand of certainty.
- Zooma
Being a ristorante on Federal Hill is a lot like being just another olive tree in the grove.
- Objecting to marriage control
“The Emperor is wearing no clothes” on both sides of the marriage war.
- I’ve Loved You So Long
So which portrayal of a victimized woman will win an Oscar this year?
- Less
Topics:
Live Reviews
, Culture and Lifestyle, Games, Hobbies and Pastimes, More
, Culture and Lifestyle, Games, Hobbies and Pastimes, Video Games, Eurythmics, Fischerspooner, Gorillaz, Van Halen, 2 Live Crew, Diplo, Less
