HARDGAF 13

No, Destructo. We salute you.
Destructo, we apologize. You usually open HARD events, and our laggy asses have often missed you play. We now realize how much we regret it, because we witnessed one hell of an eclectic set. The show-stopper of the night? A SICK ass mashup of "Pon De Floor" and the theme from Beverly Hills Cop. That ALONE was worth it.


Show up early and show some love

HARD 13 was certainly reppin' for the UK this year:


Boy 8-Bit


Jack Beats


Fake Blood

Club Nokia is a decent venue, but the only complaint I have is the elevators. I have never been so glad NOT to have been rolling in my life! The elevators were awkward for me, despite being 100% sober. Even going up one floor seemed to take forever... There's just something about being in an elevator in a club with other smelly, rolling, and drunk people that just isn't my thing.


No Security


Gaslamp Killer

The upstairs area was a little bit unexpected as it looked like a swanky bar. In case you missed it (which I did, to check out Jack Beats), the special guests were Deadmau5 and Tommy Lee!



HARD never fails to throw in surprises! But they couldn't even plan for this shit:


You KNOW you're surprised when you fucking forget to throw the Wu-Tang sign


I remembered this time

Nice to see fellow Killa Bees at HARD 13. I think I... I think I like it, like it!

CMYK wants to thank HARD again for another typical HARD event... in this case, "typical" means yet another good lineup and yet another awesome night.

ChromeOMGUG

HAPPY 2010, everybody!

To celebrate the end of a ridiculous year and the beginning of another ridiculous year, CMYK + some DGAF friends went to see Chromeo & Peanut Butter Wolf at Club Nokia. 2009 was great, but in 2010, we're doing it again! The first song we heard as we went in was Skee-Lo's "I Wish", and we knew it was gonna be a night to remember.



The show started off with Gaslamp Killer, who has the best hair I've ever seen on a DJ. The way he was rocking out, our friend BJones commented "it looks like his hair's going to fly away." Dubsteppy and fun.

Then Vega hit the stage. The singer had a fro and a leather vest. He is full of inside jokes. Let's not forget that they looked like At the Drive In if they were a Jonas Brothers cover band. Ok, they weren't THAT bad. They were cute indie pop.

And then... PEANUT BUTTER WOLF. Sorry everybody, I love Chromeo, but this was the main event for me. After experiencing the magic of PB Wolf back in September at FYF, I was expecting nothing short of genius. Chromeo was a definite contender, but this was pretty much the deciding factor for me to ditch HARD NYE this year and go to Club Nokia. I waited in anticipation to end 2009 with PB Wolf... and let me tell you. He KNOWS how to end a decade.

Of COURSE he starts off with Serge Gainsbourg, as if he saw Shimosh's "I Love French Boys" t-shirt. We all laughed and stared at the video projection in disbelief. But when Michael Jackson's "They Don't Care About Us" suddenly popped into the mix with no warning, I was awestruck. When ODB came in out of nowhere, I swear I almost broke out in tears. I mean I'd witnessed 2ManyDJs mix Dolly Parton into Slayer... but this was on another level for me.

And so he began his onslaught of hip hop videos, from old skool to '90s and '00s, while still somehow managing to fit Flight of the Conchords, Phoenix, and the Cure into the mix! (And by the way, did anybody notice that Modjo probably got "Lady" from the very first verse of Michael Jackson's "Working Day and Night"?) DAMMIT! I realized I should have requested DMX's "Up in Here" when he was requesting videos for this NYE show on Twitter!

During PB Wolf's set, a very small child came out on stage. His name is Miles, aka Baby Boogaloo. Maybe you've seen him on Ellen, but he's an adorable and tiny dancer! He was actually on stage for FYF but we could barely see him from where we were standing. Check those terrible videos I took with my phone...



Miles, aka Baby Boogaloo


look at him go!!!


Miles & his daddy

Sorry for the terrible quality. But regardless, it was a treat! Baby Boogaloo is DGAF!

And again, PB Wolf ended his set with Wu-Tang's "Triumph". Another tear in my eye... but once the projections stopped and the screen was put away, he proved himself still a formidable DJ without the visuals. I could not have asked for a better finale to 2009. Thank you PB Wolf. What a way to countdown to 2010...

10!

9!

8!

7!

6!

5!

4!

3!

2!

1!

CHROMEO!



Yup, they brought on the non-stop dance party to kick off 2010 with a whole lot of 80's style funk... WOW!!! The 80's were 3 decades ago now! Who cares when Chromeo brings it, it never sounds outdated. Songs like "Tenderoni", "Fancy Footwork", and "Night By Night", have you almost wishing for a jheri curl revival (or is that just me?). And P-Thugg is the world talkbox champion, let's not even kid ourselves. We at DGAF are so glad we got to see them play live finally. They're pretty slick DJs, and again P-Thugg's talkbox is unbelievable during mixes, but they are a fun live party band!



Thee Mike B ended the night with a schizo mash-up of club hits, dance tracks, hip hop jams, and pop songs. It was the start of a new year, a new decade, and the finish of another exhausting night of dancing.

Now all 2010 needs is a Club DGAF.

GAGA OOH LA LA...

It's good to live expensive

Seeing the one and only Lady Gaga Live was a very highly anticipated DGAF event of the year. We managed to get score some very inexpensive tickets on eBay a month before the show at the Nokia Theater, and we felt even luckier as we saw tickets to up to hundreds, and even thousands of dollars as the date approached. Neither of us had been to a large-scale pop show before, and we had no idea what we were in for, especially as it was Lady Gaga, who'd proved to be nothing short of a show-stopping spectacle herself. Not only was she a genuine musician and performer, but it there was so much more to her "image" than just her "look". Lady Gaga is an actual multi-talented and multi-dimensional artist who doesn't feel the need to be safe or sterile to win over fans. But she still acknowledges she's a pop singer in an artificial genre: "We're plastic but we still have fun!"


We are the crowd, we're comin' out

We had to dress up of course. When we arrived at a parking lot near the Nokia Theater, we took a next to someone's Hummer with various Lady Gaga motifs drawn on the windows. It was cute. Here's a word to the wise: there is nowhere really fast or inexpensive to eat directly around the Nokia Theatre, and getting the cheapest parking lot possible means you'll only have to walk literally a minute or two from the venue... why pay twice as much because you don't wanna walk for 60 more seconds?

The opening act was Semi-Precious Weapons, who were pretty DGAF. I thought the singer was a fierce tall supermodel woman, and it wasn't until halfway into the set when I realized it was in fact, a fierce man in stilettos!!! Even his voice sounded androgynous, and he rocked everyone in the Nokia Theater like the glamazon that he is. They were raw, energetic, and knew how to put on a show. We're not surprised that Lady Gaga would choose such a DGAF opening act. And awesome that she'd keep it diverse.

We were looking foward to Kid Cudi but to our dismay he never quite materialized. We found out later that the was either kicked off or dropped out of the tour.

But we got over it quickly as we were transported into flashy futuristic darkness... and Lady Gaga emerged out of smoke and a screen of lazers during the glorious "Dance in the Dark", wearing a costume with flashing lights on it. Fucking intense. Wow. It was over the top without trying too hard... but that could be used to describe her entire show.

There were costume changes, avant-garde videos playing during songs, a set that could only be described as abstract... it was theatrical without being cheesy, it was eye-catching without being tacky. Lady Gaga not only invites you to her party, but welcomes you to her world. And yes, she really does sing live! She performed most of the songs from "Fame Monster", which I definitely got more into after seeing them live. "So Happy I Could Die" was a highlight for me. There was a medley of "Money Honey", "Beautiful Dirty Rich", and "The Fame", much to my delight.

Hell, the remix of "Fancy Footwork" by Crookers even played during one of the videos shown during breaks between songs. Could Lady Gaga get any cooler?

She also does understand subtlety, which you would not expect. There were songs like "Alejandro" where she would be the only one on stage, and then of course there's the songs she plays on the piano. She put on an Elton John-like feathery costume and sang a moving rendition "Speechless" and then the magically mind-boggling ragtime acoustic piano version of "Poker Face". Her stage banter seemed unrehearsed and genuine. It may have been rehearsed, but the way Lady Gaga delivered it felt personal.

"Boys Boys Boys" was a total riot, and "Paparazzi" was as mesmerizing and haunting as I've ever heard. You have to see this to believe this, I can't even describe what went on in her performance. Totally captivating. She ended with "Eh Eh [Nothing Else I Can Say]" as she came out of the stage in that giant metal orbit ball, then went into the dance version of the all-conquering "Poker Face", which got the whole theater dancing. The encore, which was the unstoppable "Bad Romance", was the most victorious, anthemic finale that could not be topped.

Believe the hype because Lady Gaga has lived up to it and left a trail DGAF for all of us to follow. It's up to you to catch up and catch her live.

Well, we couldn't finish this story without mentioning something stupid that happened. We thought we were safe until we got back to Shimosh's car and she realized she'd lost her keys.. luckily someone had left them with the attendant.

(I'm going to spare you from a whole bunch of Lady Gaga song title puns right now...)