Went to the sold-out Chromeo show last night with George, Christian and Bonny. I was unsure of what the crowd would be like, but it turned out to be a total hipster-fest. Tight jeans and neckties everywhere. I hadn’t been to the El Rey since we saw Z-Trip and DJ P there a few years back, and I like the venue.  Don’t like that the dance area is effectively roped off with limited access points, but the place is very pimp.

While it was annoying to have to deal with some of the entitled, 19 year-old hipsters, it was reassuring to see how embraced Chromeo’s electro pop is by the hipsterati, since my beats have a similar vibe and I mostly play to my hipster buddies. When I’m drunkenly dancing in the fray at shows, I become 6′5″ 250 lbs and enjoy a little jockeying for position. An incensed hipster girl behind me demanded that I move forward a little, and I naturally found myself inching backwards whilst getting my groove on. Oh pardon me, did you need a little more space? Fuck you.

Peanut Butter Wolf opened up with a lot of old school jams like Kriss Kross and Grandmaster Flash, and also had his gear synced up to a VJ setup that was controlling music videos on a huge screen. Unlike Relm though, the VJ element seemed better suited to the venue. Much larger, and the DJ was set up off to the side rather than in front of the jumbotron. Some timely wind-downs and scratching over funny parts of the videos was cool. He got the party started for sure. So did the Patron shots. In between acts, the sound system was on a 100% Daft Punk shuffle. Holler.

Chromeo came out to a huge ovation and proceeded to rock the house. I had seen pictures of their live shows before, but was curious to see how their very produced tracks would translate into a live performance. Dave 1 was on the bass guitar and P-Thugg on the synth; and I noticed a Macbook open off to the side, so I imagine they have all the rest of the musical elements all synced up in Ableton.

Their stuff is so, for lack of a better word, shallow. Which I love because it’s just pure fun rather than something to dwell on or think about. Singing along to Tenderoni was gloriously goofy, and it was also very refreshing to hear original Chromeo tracks after wading through all the remixes thereof throughout the blogosphere for so long. Proliferation of remixes as a gauge of success is very apropos for the Chromeo boys, ala D.A.N.C.E….

A lot, lot, lot of fun. Took some shaky concert pics which I may post–gotta develop a steadier iphone hand. Big ups to G-Unit for jumping on the tix months ago right before they sold out!