Pantherfest isn’t typically a hip place to be if you’re not a college freshman, though this year’s pairing of Shiny Toy Guns with Kid Cudi made for a crowd too dense to save a seat. Despite how one-sided the crowd was towards Cudi, those who showed respect for the opener found themselves surprisingly content with the performance.
After all, nineteen and twenty-year-olds were still shoving their way in by the time STG had closed up shop. Unlike the attempted crossover of last year (Common with Dashboard Confessional), promoters did a good job of making Shiny Toy Guns seem like just another band they convinced to fill time.
Whether or not anyone came to see Shiny Toy Guns was irrelevant, as they held their own just fine in front of the Cudi-smitten audience. For a band that warms up like prog-rockers, performs like arena-rockers and loses its cool like an electronic band, they don’t reveal much about themselves initially.
As the inherent opener, they began the evening with a loose theme of space exploration, relying on Top 30 singles like “Ghost Town” and “You Are The One” to lift away audience cobwebs; that is, before they used that lack of familiarity to their advantage.
Through volume alone, they made trapping oneself inside a video game sound like an easy task – a process the band’s debut We Are Pilots won a Grammy nomination for back in 2006. During their set, Chad Petree (guitar) and Sisely Treasure (vocals) chose to call “dancefy(ing)” in “Le Disko” and “a feeling inside me” on “Rainy Monday”.
The band understood its place in the evening, and consequently offered little more than a hello. And while bottomed-out synths, processed vocals, and buzz-saw guitar may not date their music the way they’d like it to, their appeal is likely to change once famed producer Andy Wallace releases III this winter.
It’s likely that before Kid Cudi stepped onstage, he came to the realization that at this point in his career he’s about as controversial as a Pink Floyd poster on a dorm room wall. In other words, it was comforting to know he recognized this as affirmed by his Floyd sampled intro music. Cudi may not be humble, but he is certainly unmoved by his mammoth commerciality. In fact, it was almost as though an amphitheater of fans just happened to be there as he and his DJ rehearsed.
As he stood kindly in front of a basement-altered Afrofuturist logo, the rapper smiled brightly as he basked in the glory. Playing along without any real theme, Cudi appeared more excited about premiering new material (“Revofev” and “Mr. Rager”) than performing his blockbusters. That’s not to say that the venue wasn’t completely engaged by the time new material from next month’s Vol. 2 was played.
In between chart-burners like “Soundtrack 2 My Life” and “Up, Up & Away”, Cudi initiated more Bic flicks than a Styx ballad when he skated over his own “Man On The Moon.” After a seventy-minute set – replete with commentary and inventive freestyling – it was as though Cudi felt he was losing attention spans as he smartly ended with two his most beloved numbers, “Erase Me” and “Pursuit of Happiness.”
Playing to a crowd with this level heightened enthusiasm – as opposed to the Marcus Amphitheater’s usual Boomer-centric restraint – illustrates how uncertain Cudi’s future truly is. While there was no ticket scalping taking place on site, there also wasn’t a single reserved seat available. But the fact remains that if this had been a regular Summerfest gig, chances are Cudi would have been performing on a side stage.
107 Responses to “Pantherfest’s perfect pairing?”
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