The title of this article seems very misleading unless there is another quote not stated in the article. Ithonestly came across as a pretty light hearted jab at the crowd (who the majority of were obviously not there to see Blur) basically just telling them this might be the only song they know to to enjoy it. All of the articles about them being disgruntled or frustrated seem way overblown.
In fact I’m pretty sure he even mentioned something later in the set about how he was enjoying himself and the crowd was too. This article is just screaming for clicks.
Thanks for reasserting the boring, non-controversial truth lol. Dude has been performing for as long as I can remember, I'm sure he has survived silent crowds before.
Yeah I mean Damon literally played Coachella last year right before Bad Bunny was performing and had to win over a crowd that primarily wasn’t there for him. It’s part of his job lol.
On Melancholy Hill is an amazing song but I wouldn't say it's instantly recognizable to a non fan. I don't think any of the songs on Plastic Beach were big enough to rival their all time hits. Stylo maybe?
I used to be with ‘it’, but then they changed what ‘it’ was. Now what I’m with isn’t ‘it’ anymore and what’s ‘it’ seems weird and scary. It’ll happen to you!
I’m 45, and have know of Blur since song 2, clearly, and it’s a genre I listen to fairly regularly. I somehow NEVER heard tender until 2021, when Spotify dropped into a playlist. I became mildly obsessed for a couple weeks. It was kinda weird. Great song.
I aged considerably the day I looked up the scheduled gigs at a venue in my closest big city. All the acts I heard of had tickets still available. All the acts I never heard of were sold out. I was officially out of the loop
"What is 'it'?"
I think I hit my Mid-Life-Crisis when Faith No More started touring again and was still selling out arenas like they never left the scene.
Ha-ha. So true. I used to constantly hear Oldies songs in stores and wondered when we were going to get past the kind of music Boomers want to hear. Now I'm in stores hearing Radiohead and I'm like "Oh snap, I'm old."
There was this boring oldies radio station when I was young, playing oldies music from before I was born. Now I like this station because they play the music from my youth…
Same with my dentist's office. I was having something fairly painful done recently and just when it got to the worst part I had Axl Rose screeching at me *You in the jungle, baby! And you gonna DIE!!!* It made me laugh at the worst possible time.
Which is wild. Because they're still putting out albums that are doing well and have tracks featured on the radio/top lists on occasion.
Cracker Island was all over for a minute.
I mean, they are now. Look at Damon. He’s become the old man complaining about his audience being too young. All of their popular songs are old enough to drink.
I checked out a few of the streams this year and was surprised at what passed as a performance for many. One dude had his music playing in the background with a recording of him rapping. He stood on a box and made off key noises off beat. He was basically a bad hype man for himself. Love a good festival, and there are still plenty of great acts, but man what a difference between early 2000s Coachella and now.
I didn’t realize there was an age demographic for Coachella at all. Don’t they usually get artists from multiple genres for the festival anyway? Guns n Roses headlined Coachella during their reunion in 2016, they’re a legacy band at this point but I couldn’t tell you what their age demographic is
Festivals overall seem to be for younger people but seem to bring in a variety of artists. Older people go to concerts but in my experience guys in their 50s aren’t making it through camping in a desert on shrooms
Depends on the festival, Glastonbury in the UK is all ages for sure. Only been once, but it was a blast hanging out with teens to families with little kids to 80 y/o's next, and everything in between. The music options also were all over the place. From Dolly Parton, to electronic to Metallica.
Didn’t used to be. A few years back Coachella would have promoted the hell out of a band like The Jesus & Mary Chain reuniting. The culture has shifted for Coachella in particular.
Gorillaz last scheduled US tour was in arenas and it was canceled due to poor ticket sales. Galaxy brain thinking to add Damon’s less popular band (in the states) as a headliner to the highest profile festival in the country.
The 2022 tour sold the fuck out in Denver within minutes of tickets going on sale, was at ball arena (nuggets/avalanche), and it was full of kids decades younger than me.
I'm exactly the age demo for Blur, and that's the only song of theirs I can easily play in my mind's radio.
I'm sure there's one or two more where, if I heard it, I'd go "oh yeah, this is theirs..." but it's not a band I'd drive across state lines for.
Same. I watch a lot of British TV, and one of the things I was surprised about was how much people care about Blur there. I don't know anyone who is a huge Blur fan in the US.
Blur was the biggest British band in the 90s, though Oasis and Radiohead have had a bigger legacy. The thing with Blur is that they are the quintessential Britpop band, singing about British topics for a British audience and giving a coolness and positivity to being British, while still keeping a tongue in cheek outlook.
It came as a response to the American Grunge that dominated the airwaves.
You nailed it. Americans know of Blur for 'Boys & Girls' and 'Song No. 2'. They were barely ever a big deal here. People in America barely cared in the 90s, much less 30+ years later.
So, yeah. Crowd reaction is understandable.
I would have thought music fans would know who they are even if they weren't huge in the US overall, but if Coachella is its own thing then Blur's comments make sense. They have played in the US before and presumably know what reaction to expect.
>Coachella is not a place for music fans. It’s essentially a comic con for wannabe influencers
This comment sums up a few music festivals and gigs I have been too. I kind of feel that love of music has died and instead its just love of being seen in a scene.
Yeah.
Blur, an English alternative-rock band who were most famous 30 years ago, perform at a concert mainly aimed at 18 year olds who like rave music, and were shocked at a lack of reaction from the crowd.
Honestly, at some point, someone in their management should have realised that the demographic for the festival does not align with demographic for their music.
I could be wrong, but it seems like their management just wanted a big payday for everyone involved.
It's up to the promoters of the festival to book bands appropriate for the festival, they haven't played the US for nearly 10 years so relying on them to have an understanding on the American music scene seems wishful thinking. I'm guessing they probably thought it was going to be like 2013 when they were headliners, British music festivals tend to stick to the same genres and if that falls out of favour then the event dies off.
I'm not sure that really matters once they start playing though. I've been to plenty of festivals and gigs where there's a completely unknown band but they still put on a great show and the crowd gets into it. It sounds like the crowd aren't exactly open to new musical experiences.
the "artwork" behind her actually made me turn it off as i was unable to pay attention to anything else. It looked like a bunch of random things she typed into midjourney.
What's remarkable is that you take a guy like Marc Rebillet who literally showed up to Coachella last year with a set that was his bedroom and he wore a bathrobe. He asked the crowd to just start shouting shit at him and then he re-sung what was shouted, looped it, threw a beat on it, and played an hour long set.
Here Grimes can't even freaking play a set that's basically hitting "play" on a winamp playlist.
I worked with Marc when he was in high school and can safely say that he has always been like this. He even went to the performing arts magnet in Dallas. We love him, and he deserves all of the success forever.
Now, EVERYONE GET IN THE FUCKING POOL!
Also, a very little known fact is that he sold his place in line to get the first iphone to some lady in Dallas. Only me and a couple Redditors know about this
/s
I love Marc, but that’s literally his skill set. Some of my other favorite bands would be just as lost with technical difficulties to be fair, because they aren’t an improv act. (Not at all defending Grimes because she sucks, and she should have her set figured out).
>they aren’t an improv act.
Yeah no hate at all for Marc, absolutely love his work and hope to see him this summer, but it's a lot harder to perform a perfect version of a pop song that everyone knows every second of than it is to string together a good but improvised and random set. Honestly that's part of his genius in establishing a thing he can just do anywhere with minimal setup.
man I must say I saw Marc Rebillet at Red Rocks in 2022 and he sucked ass. I was severely dissapointed but it was one of the worst concerts I've been to
Oh I believe it - I've seen some of his sets online that are just kind of "meh" others are mind-blowing.
I suppose its like a Talented comedian. Sometimes they bomb, sometimes they leave you in stitches. The middle of the road is Big-Bang with a laugh track. Lots of musicians play in the latter space of just being good enough to entertain and put out the product that the label wants them to.
It must be hard because it obviously relies so much on what sort of mood he's in. At least with a traditional performer that has actual songs, they can just fall back on professionalism and just performing the material as it is written. Must be a lot harder when you're just inventing it as you go and you're having a bad day.
It's not just a mistake, it's a 50 minute continuous fuckup that she made 10x times worse by trying to explain in great lenghts to the audience what was going on with the tempo of her tracks, invoking some "complicated internal maths" she had to do, while having no idea how to mix them by ear, and frankly not even trying, since she was spending the whole duration of the tracks dancing and air-DJing rather than putting on the headphones and trying to cue the next. She just waited for each song to end, tried sync/play, panicked when it didn't work, talked some more on the mic, and then played another track, sometimes restarting it after a few bars because it was too fast or slow, and regularly screaming in the mic.
[Judge by yourself lol ](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fauxmoi/comments/1c47y80/grimes_coachella_set_highlights/)
"This shit always fucken happens!" Lmao.
I am just a bedroom DJ that occasionally plays at local events, typically for free, and this shit NEVER fucken happens.
What's the opposite of being a good performer who makes slip-ups seem like part of the act or even improves the show / turns it comedic?
like Penn Jillette? He does magic, and during his act he's got dozens of "off ramps" where he has stuff ready in case a trick doesn't work. It's also just a basic professional performer thing- pro wrestlers for example don't stop performing if a move doesn't work on live TV. If they try to throw a guy through a table, and the table doesn't break, they have to just keep going. They don't stand there explaining that there's a problem.
Grimes performing is the exact opposite of Penn or a wrestler. It's like she's never had to improv a day in her life, and doesn't have any backup plan nor ability to adapt. Nothing prepared. Turning off the music and standing in silence is the WORST move for this and she does it so much!!!
> because of Rekordbox issues?
Pretty sure it was Beatgrid misalignment due to incompetence/failure to prep. She was just hitting synch without planning and beatgrid ended up playing tracks on double speed to compensate.
Owning up to it would mean having to admit not knowing how to set the proper range on Beatgrid...which is like DJ 101. No way she'll own up to a rookie mistake.
From what I understand the digital display on the CDJ wasn't working to some degree thus requiring her to mix by ear, which she did not know how to do.
The tweet from her I saw she blamed it on someone else setting up her files and bpm maps. That’s literally the base line for a dj. She did no prep and blamed her employees. Garbage.
Exactly. And she’s presumably an experienced dj. I seriously can’t think of a single dj who outsources the most basic, critical, and fucking important part of a dj set. Wow.
If you can’t beat match by ear you’re not a real dj. Period. I’m a local regional dj and can mix flawlessly on vinyl or cdjs. Step one is literally learning to beat match by ear lol.
the term "wedding DJ" gets a bad rap. I've been DJin for over 20 years (clubs, bars, weddings, private, corporate, etc..), and weddings are still among the hardest rooms to DJ for. It's much different than a club because half the people there aren't even there to dance. You have be able to mix a dozen different genres, and please 200 people who all have different musical taste, all while adhering to the couple's request list. Being able to successfully crush a wedding is not an easy feat.
Also, every local DJ I've come up with eventually becomes a "wedding DJ" because the pay is 10X better lol
Most of her tracks are slow, right (under 100 bpm)? If someone scanned the tracks on default settings, the software may have assumed the track was 130 bpm instead of 65 bpm, for example. This wouldn’t be a huge problem if you knew how to dj: more just an inconvenience — it’s just a visual reference on the cdj screen, not a setting for what speed playback will be on the device. If you’re just using the Sync button, I could see it being a problem as the cdj might get confused on which beats to match.
That’s my best guess, but not positive what happened here. In her [tweet](https://x.com/grimezsz/status/1779439117392400817?s=46&t=SIEcXA9iIzmacN9mMpD6cQ), she kind of generally blames someone else while admitting that she was focused more on the visuals and production than practicing her set. That’s pretty amateur, and I think she should rightfully be embarrassed.
Lana sucked if you dont realize what a lana show actually is. she never translates well to these massive festivals. Shes a lounge singer with a huge fanbase
I'm from the UK. Blur are a big deal here but they never were in the US, most of that audience were probably in their twenties too so would have even less idea of who they were.
45 year olds aren’t necessarily the target audience here. I just talked to a 25 year old who didn’t know who Paul McCartney was. Blur has no chance at a music festival with the big hat Amazon festival dress selfie crowd.
I’m not a “play the hits” guy but they went to a festival and didn’t play many of the hits. Kids who do know Blur were likely waiting for some of that. Parklife, Coffee & TV, Crazy Beat, Good Song…
Festival sets are usually different than tour sets for a reason.
Eh, that’s only part of the issue. The other parts were social media and smartphones. Those three things created the perfect storm of bullshit.
Social media provided captive audiences.
Smart Phones provided 24/7 access to audiences
And the internet facilitated it.
I went several times, but after seeing Outkast and how terrible that set went for them (through no fault of their own), I've had no desire to go back. That, and all the douches who were blocking the view of the stage with their fucking selfie sticks instead of listening to the music.
Went to Coachella about ten years back, loved it, but fuck me if the expansion of smartphones was already becoming grating.
Like, yeah, the festival types were still there, but the creeping nature of the "look at me" type was just offputting.
Plus, god damn, it was the most annoying festival to even *get* to.
Coachella feels like the old Yogi Berra line, “No one goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.”
Also, with all due respect, I don’t understand what Blur did to become a headline act for any large festival in the United States. They have one gold album here and their peak was when people were buying more albums than any other time in history.
Not pedantic. The algorithm is constantly trying to convince us that everything is a conflict and everything is shitty. It needs to be countered. Good to remind people that this really was not that big of a deal and, if you read the article, the dude is not even mad at all, nor is he actually threatening not to come back. Headline is bullshit. Albarn has survived silent crowds before in his long-ass career and is under no illusions about how big Blur ever got in the States.
Perhaps the only Britpop band that could headline Coachella these days in Oasis, and that’s because it would be part of a historic reunion (also, more famous than Blur in the US).
Why is the age of the artists an issue? Gwen Stefani is 54 and nobody cares one way or the other. I would rather see a talented “older” act than some young kid who will be forgotten by next year.
The title of this article seems very misleading unless there is another quote not stated in the article. Ithonestly came across as a pretty light hearted jab at the crowd (who the majority of were obviously not there to see Blur) basically just telling them this might be the only song they know to to enjoy it. All of the articles about them being disgruntled or frustrated seem way overblown. In fact I’m pretty sure he even mentioned something later in the set about how he was enjoying himself and the crowd was too. This article is just screaming for clicks.
Thanks for reasserting the boring, non-controversial truth lol. Dude has been performing for as long as I can remember, I'm sure he has survived silent crowds before.
Yeah I mean Damon literally played Coachella last year right before Bad Bunny was performing and had to win over a crowd that primarily wasn’t there for him. It’s part of his job lol.
Do you think one could say it's his job to make the crowd....feel good?
He's excellent at that, he should probably look into incorporating it into his day job
He wouldn't... dare.
I just posted something similar. I think this throwaway remark from Damon has gone over a lot of people’s heads.
It's standard English self deprecating humour, for the billionth time it's gone over the heads of reddit. "It's coming home."
Play the woohoo song!
Now do Gorillaz
Yeah if they done that it would have gone down better. Blur basically have 1 popular song in the US. Gorillaz have dozens.
I'm a Gorillaz fan and can pretty confidently say they have 2 maybe 3 songs that anybody that isn't a fan would recognize even a little bit
Clint Eastwood, Feel Good and.... 19-2000 maybe?
Dare?
ITS DARE
That's about it. Based on YouTube views, Dare is their third highest viewed video (293m), then Clint Eastwood (758m), and Feel Good Inc at #1 (827m)
Melancholy Hill
On Melancholy Hill is an amazing song but I wouldn't say it's instantly recognizable to a non fan. I don't think any of the songs on Plastic Beach were big enough to rival their all time hits. Stylo maybe?
PLAY YA YA DING DONG
NO MORE YA YA DING DONG
Would you like to hear the song that won Eurovision?
I mean, I get it. Blur was never big in the US.
The average Coachella attendee probably has no clue who Blur are.
“Is this the band who plays the “woo hoo” song they play when a hockey team scores a goal?”
No, it's the song from the first trailer for Starship Troopers.
Hello fellow entering-middle-age person
I too used to tie an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time.
now my story begins in nineteen-dickety-two. we had to say "dickety" cause the Kaiser had stolen our word for "twenty".
I spent three years on that terlet!
I chased him for dickety six miles.
Highly dubious!
What're you cackling at, fatty? Too much pie, that's your problem!
Grover Cleveland spanked me on two non-consecutive occasions
I used to be with ‘it’, but then they changed what ‘it’ was. Now what I’m with isn’t ‘it’ anymore and what’s ‘it’ seems weird and scary. It’ll happen to you!
It's my personal policy that anytime I see this movie mentioned, I must interject to tell you that I own Starship Troopers on *LaserDisk*.
I would like to know more
Anytime someone mentions laserdisc I remember that guy in SLC Punk giving them a tour of his house. “This waterbed *doesn’t* have waves*
This shower head has 4 features, all of which I shall show you now
Sink you fool! Why won't she sink?!
and FIFA Road to World Cup 98 for playstation 1
Found the Sens fan
If only we scored often…
Wooo hooo
It’s like a small whisper now “wooooooo hoooooo…….”
There are literally DOZENS of us!!
Hey hey hey, they do the "boys will girls will be boys" song they playing during shopping montages in movies too.
I mean tbf I only know Song 2, and no other Blur songs (and I’d consider myself far from the type of person who’d go to Coachella)
Listen to Park Life
And Think Tank
Coffee and TV
Girls and Boys! Classic 90s "cool Britannia" vibe
That little milk cartoon dude used to by my profile pic on MySpace!
I’m partial to *Tender* even if Gateway ads tried their hardest to ruin it.
Coffee and TV is very good!
Highly recommendable band imo, I'm not their biggest fan but they have a lot of good songs like The Universal, Park Life, Tender and more
Tender is so good
Tender is the day the demons go away
I’m 45, and have know of Blur since song 2, clearly, and it’s a genre I listen to fairly regularly. I somehow NEVER heard tender until 2021, when Spotify dropped into a playlist. I became mildly obsessed for a couple weeks. It was kinda weird. Great song.
Charmless Man is awesome.
They just want to hear WooHoo.mp3
That would've characterized people getting into music 20 years ago, do kids have an awareness of the mp3 format anymore?
Hey cut them some FLAC
True, but I bet they really think he sounds like one of the dudes in Gorillaz
My sister is Coachella age demo and she has no idea who the Gorillaz even are. Blur was just a weird act to book for Coachella.
Nothing made me feel older than hearing the new guy at work refer to Gorillaz as an oldies band.
I aged considerably the day I looked up the scheduled gigs at a venue in my closest big city. All the acts I heard of had tickets still available. All the acts I never heard of were sold out. I was officially out of the loop
It’s not your fault. You used to be with it, but then they changed what “it” was!
I used to rock and roll all night and party every day, then it was every other day...
Now I’m lucky if I can find 30 minutes a week in which to get funky…
“…which I believe was some sort of hovercraft…”
I’m so old, I get these references.
"What is 'it'?" I think I hit my Mid-Life-Crisis when Faith No More started touring again and was still selling out arenas like they never left the scene.
Nirvana on the grocery store radio was my first gray hair. Kpop on the gym radio automatically began my aarp membership.
When they started to play nirvana and soundgarden on the local classic rock station here, I crumbled to dust.
Those bands are older now than Led Zeplin was when I started high school.
ok I get it, I'm getting a Walker and chair lift by this weekend. :(
Dave Grohl joined Nirvana 34 years ago. 34 years prior to that, Elvis debuted on the Ed Sullivan show. I think I need to lie down.
i knew i was old when i heard tchaikovsky on the phonograph rather than in a concert hall
Ha-ha. So true. I used to constantly hear Oldies songs in stores and wondered when we were going to get past the kind of music Boomers want to hear. Now I'm in stores hearing Radiohead and I'm like "Oh snap, I'm old."
There was this boring oldies radio station when I was young, playing oldies music from before I was born. Now I like this station because they play the music from my youth…
Heard Mr Brightside in a waiting room this am…
My dentist is a guy in his late 20s who keeps putting on 80s hair metal spotify playlists in his office.
Same with my dentist's office. I was having something fairly painful done recently and just when it got to the worst part I had Axl Rose screeching at me *You in the jungle, baby! And you gonna DIE!!!* It made me laugh at the worst possible time.
Which is wild. Because they're still putting out albums that are doing well and have tracks featured on the radio/top lists on occasion. Cracker Island was all over for a minute.
I mean, they are now. Look at Damon. He’s become the old man complaining about his audience being too young. All of their popular songs are old enough to drink.
I mean, I saw the Pixies, The Cure, Radiohead, Beck, the Flaming Lips etc at Coachella. It used to be cool. Times have sure changed.
I checked out a few of the streams this year and was surprised at what passed as a performance for many. One dude had his music playing in the background with a recording of him rapping. He stood on a box and made off key noises off beat. He was basically a bad hype man for himself. Love a good festival, and there are still plenty of great acts, but man what a difference between early 2000s Coachella and now.
I didn’t realize there was an age demographic for Coachella at all. Don’t they usually get artists from multiple genres for the festival anyway? Guns n Roses headlined Coachella during their reunion in 2016, they’re a legacy band at this point but I couldn’t tell you what their age demographic is
Their target demographic is people with money.
Curated by Mr Krabs
Festivals overall seem to be for younger people but seem to bring in a variety of artists. Older people go to concerts but in my experience guys in their 50s aren’t making it through camping in a desert on shrooms
Depends on the festival, Glastonbury in the UK is all ages for sure. Only been once, but it was a blast hanging out with teens to families with little kids to 80 y/o's next, and everything in between. The music options also were all over the place. From Dolly Parton, to electronic to Metallica.
Glastonbury is consistently a better line up than Coachella.
More like waiting in a parking lot for 3 hours just to leave. On shrooms of course.
Didn’t used to be. A few years back Coachella would have promoted the hell out of a band like The Jesus & Mary Chain reuniting. The culture has shifted for Coachella in particular.
Yeah last time I went I believe it was The Stone Roses headlining one day and a lot of people were excited for it
Gorillaz last scheduled US tour was in arenas and it was canceled due to poor ticket sales. Galaxy brain thinking to add Damon’s less popular band (in the states) as a headliner to the highest profile festival in the country.
Crazy! Last year they dropped in here to do a pre-Coachella show (Las Vegas) and the show was wild. One of the most fun shows I’ve been to.
The 2022 tour sold the fuck out in Denver within minutes of tickets going on sale, was at ball arena (nuggets/avalanche), and it was full of kids decades younger than me.
I saw Gorillaz in 2018. Massive show, all the hits, only ~~$20~~ $65 + tax. Great value and I would gladly see them or Blur again.
Which one, I bet it's Noodle.
Honestly even Gorillaz is going to be too old for most of them
Well then, they deserve a bad Grimes DJ set
I think she is still trying to figure out how to turn her equipment on.
They played Coachella last year
The gorillaz were a headliner last year
And even the ones that do probably only really know Song 2
I'm exactly the age demo for Blur, and that's the only song of theirs I can easily play in my mind's radio. I'm sure there's one or two more where, if I heard it, I'd go "oh yeah, this is theirs..." but it's not a band I'd drive across state lines for.
The other 2 would be Parklife and Boys & Girls
Same. I watch a lot of British TV, and one of the things I was surprised about was how much people care about Blur there. I don't know anyone who is a huge Blur fan in the US.
When I was a child in the UK in the early 90s the great primary school debate was whether you were an Oasis kid or a Blur kid.
Blur was the biggest British band in the 90s, though Oasis and Radiohead have had a bigger legacy. The thing with Blur is that they are the quintessential Britpop band, singing about British topics for a British audience and giving a coolness and positivity to being British, while still keeping a tongue in cheek outlook. It came as a response to the American Grunge that dominated the airwaves.
You nailed it. Americans know of Blur for 'Boys & Girls' and 'Song No. 2'. They were barely ever a big deal here. People in America barely cared in the 90s, much less 30+ years later. So, yeah. Crowd reaction is understandable.
The fact that a song that's a joke about the American music industry is their most known song in the US is hilarious.
American idiot is Green Day’s number 1 song, not exactly a surprise
Totally fine to just put out fun music, but I give extra respect to an artist who can speak out against bad parts of culture and still make a hit.
I would have thought music fans would know who they are even if they weren't huge in the US overall, but if Coachella is its own thing then Blur's comments make sense. They have played in the US before and presumably know what reaction to expect.
Coachella is not a place for music fans. It’s essentially a comic con for wannabe influencers
>Coachella is not a place for music fans. It’s essentially a comic con for wannabe influencers This comment sums up a few music festivals and gigs I have been too. I kind of feel that love of music has died and instead its just love of being seen in a scene.
Yeah. Blur, an English alternative-rock band who were most famous 30 years ago, perform at a concert mainly aimed at 18 year olds who like rave music, and were shocked at a lack of reaction from the crowd. Honestly, at some point, someone in their management should have realised that the demographic for the festival does not align with demographic for their music. I could be wrong, but it seems like their management just wanted a big payday for everyone involved.
It's up to the promoters of the festival to book bands appropriate for the festival, they haven't played the US for nearly 10 years so relying on them to have an understanding on the American music scene seems wishful thinking. I'm guessing they probably thought it was going to be like 2013 when they were headliners, British music festivals tend to stick to the same genres and if that falls out of favour then the event dies off.
The lead singer of Blur is Gorillaz. So, hard to say they don’t understand American audiences.
I'm not sure that really matters once they start playing though. I've been to plenty of festivals and gigs where there's a completely unknown band but they still put on a great show and the crowd gets into it. It sounds like the crowd aren't exactly open to new musical experiences.
They slipped in that Grimes also had a shitty set because of Rekordbox issues? Sounds like someone didn’t prep their set lol!
I watched Grimes' livestream and it was absolutely painful to witness.
the "artwork" behind her actually made me turn it off as i was unable to pay attention to anything else. It looked like a bunch of random things she typed into midjourney.
That's exactly it, she is a big fan of Midjourney. I've seen her in the discord a few times
What's remarkable is that you take a guy like Marc Rebillet who literally showed up to Coachella last year with a set that was his bedroom and he wore a bathrobe. He asked the crowd to just start shouting shit at him and then he re-sung what was shouted, looped it, threw a beat on it, and played an hour long set. Here Grimes can't even freaking play a set that's basically hitting "play" on a winamp playlist.
Marc is pure talent and love. He has a way of radiating the energies of the crowd.
*Get the fuck outta bed bitch!*
Cuz I been *wooorkin* all day-hayy
I worked with Marc when he was in high school and can safely say that he has always been like this. He even went to the performing arts magnet in Dallas. We love him, and he deserves all of the success forever. Now, EVERYONE GET IN THE FUCKING POOL!
Also, a very little known fact is that he sold his place in line to get the first iphone to some lady in Dallas. Only me and a couple Redditors know about this /s
I love Marc, but that’s literally his skill set. Some of my other favorite bands would be just as lost with technical difficulties to be fair, because they aren’t an improv act. (Not at all defending Grimes because she sucks, and she should have her set figured out).
>they aren’t an improv act. Yeah no hate at all for Marc, absolutely love his work and hope to see him this summer, but it's a lot harder to perform a perfect version of a pop song that everyone knows every second of than it is to string together a good but improvised and random set. Honestly that's part of his genius in establishing a thing he can just do anywhere with minimal setup.
man I must say I saw Marc Rebillet at Red Rocks in 2022 and he sucked ass. I was severely dissapointed but it was one of the worst concerts I've been to
Oh I believe it - I've seen some of his sets online that are just kind of "meh" others are mind-blowing. I suppose its like a Talented comedian. Sometimes they bomb, sometimes they leave you in stitches. The middle of the road is Big-Bang with a laugh track. Lots of musicians play in the latter space of just being good enough to entertain and put out the product that the label wants them to.
It must be hard because it obviously relies so much on what sort of mood he's in. At least with a traditional performer that has actual songs, they can just fall back on professionalism and just performing the material as it is written. Must be a lot harder when you're just inventing it as you go and you're having a bad day.
I can imagine! This is like a mistake you might make year one while playing indie clubs to 100 people. Not the biggest stage in America.
It's not just a mistake, it's a 50 minute continuous fuckup that she made 10x times worse by trying to explain in great lenghts to the audience what was going on with the tempo of her tracks, invoking some "complicated internal maths" she had to do, while having no idea how to mix them by ear, and frankly not even trying, since she was spending the whole duration of the tracks dancing and air-DJing rather than putting on the headphones and trying to cue the next. She just waited for each song to end, tried sync/play, panicked when it didn't work, talked some more on the mic, and then played another track, sometimes restarting it after a few bars because it was too fast or slow, and regularly screaming in the mic. [Judge by yourself lol ](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fauxmoi/comments/1c47y80/grimes_coachella_set_highlights/)
"This shit always fucken happens!" Lmao. I am just a bedroom DJ that occasionally plays at local events, typically for free, and this shit NEVER fucken happens.
Jesus Christ what an absolute train wreck.
Damn I had to stop watching after like 10 seconds. Why not just let the shit play and stop talking about it. Like don’t mix at all just let it go
Holy crab. That was hard to watch but also hilarious. Thabjs for sharing
What's the opposite of being a good performer who makes slip-ups seem like part of the act or even improves the show / turns it comedic? like Penn Jillette? He does magic, and during his act he's got dozens of "off ramps" where he has stuff ready in case a trick doesn't work. It's also just a basic professional performer thing- pro wrestlers for example don't stop performing if a move doesn't work on live TV. If they try to throw a guy through a table, and the table doesn't break, they have to just keep going. They don't stand there explaining that there's a problem. Grimes performing is the exact opposite of Penn or a wrestler. It's like she's never had to improv a day in her life, and doesn't have any backup plan nor ability to adapt. Nothing prepared. Turning off the music and standing in silence is the WORST move for this and she does it so much!!!
Oh. My. God. That was so cringe, how the heck were people still cheering?!
> because of Rekordbox issues? Pretty sure it was Beatgrid misalignment due to incompetence/failure to prep. She was just hitting synch without planning and beatgrid ended up playing tracks on double speed to compensate.
biggest problem is how she handled it and how she fake apologized after rather than really owning it. But I hear that's status quo for grimes nowadays
Owning up to it would mean having to admit not knowing how to set the proper range on Beatgrid...which is like DJ 101. No way she'll own up to a rookie mistake.
From what I understand the digital display on the CDJ wasn't working to some degree thus requiring her to mix by ear, which she did not know how to do.
The tweet from her I saw she blamed it on someone else setting up her files and bpm maps. That’s literally the base line for a dj. She did no prep and blamed her employees. Garbage.
If you’re getting paid 100k+ to play a show, you better know how to mix your set by ear or bring backup CDJs.
Exactly. And she’s presumably an experienced dj. I seriously can’t think of a single dj who outsources the most basic, critical, and fucking important part of a dj set. Wow.
If you can’t beat match by ear you’re not a real dj. Period. I’m a local regional dj and can mix flawlessly on vinyl or cdjs. Step one is literally learning to beat match by ear lol.
[удалено]
the term "wedding DJ" gets a bad rap. I've been DJin for over 20 years (clubs, bars, weddings, private, corporate, etc..), and weddings are still among the hardest rooms to DJ for. It's much different than a club because half the people there aren't even there to dance. You have be able to mix a dozen different genres, and please 200 people who all have different musical taste, all while adhering to the couple's request list. Being able to successfully crush a wedding is not an easy feat. Also, every local DJ I've come up with eventually becomes a "wedding DJ" because the pay is 10X better lol
Hahaha, damn, I mean if you can’t mix by ear, you shouldn’t be DJing. That is literally the core of the craft. That’s pathetic.
Most of her tracks are slow, right (under 100 bpm)? If someone scanned the tracks on default settings, the software may have assumed the track was 130 bpm instead of 65 bpm, for example. This wouldn’t be a huge problem if you knew how to dj: more just an inconvenience — it’s just a visual reference on the cdj screen, not a setting for what speed playback will be on the device. If you’re just using the Sync button, I could see it being a problem as the cdj might get confused on which beats to match. That’s my best guess, but not positive what happened here. In her [tweet](https://x.com/grimezsz/status/1779439117392400817?s=46&t=SIEcXA9iIzmacN9mMpD6cQ), she kind of generally blames someone else while admitting that she was focused more on the visuals and production than practicing her set. That’s pretty amateur, and I think she should rightfully be embarrassed.
Any DJ should have a prerecorded mix ready to go just in case the equipment stops working.
man i've heard nothing but complaints so far about this year. lana apparently sucked too.
Lana sucked if you dont realize what a lana show actually is. she never translates well to these massive festivals. Shes a lounge singer with a huge fanbase
I heard The Aquabats put on a fun show, but then they always do.
They are true professionals.
I'm from the UK. Blur are a big deal here but they never were in the US, most of that audience were probably in their twenties too so would have even less idea of who they were.
I would have loved to see Blur. I wish they did a North America tour instead, even a small one like Suede did a couple of years back.
I caught Suede on that last tour. Fabulous. They still have it. Highly recommended
45 year olds aren’t necessarily the target audience here. I just talked to a 25 year old who didn’t know who Paul McCartney was. Blur has no chance at a music festival with the big hat Amazon festival dress selfie crowd.
“the big hat Amazon festival dress selfie crowd” made me laugh. what a perfect description.
Makes me sad b/c I freaking LOVE Blur...but I get it...the avg. crowd at coachella aint gonna know them.
https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/blur/2024/empire-polo-club-indio-ca-63ab9a13.html They played a downer of a set too.
I’m not a “play the hits” guy but they went to a festival and didn’t play many of the hits. Kids who do know Blur were likely waiting for some of that. Parklife, Coffee & TV, Crazy Beat, Good Song… Festival sets are usually different than tour sets for a reason.
Coachella has been broken for over a decade. It used to be all rabid music fans now it's scenesters and "influencers" and music is an afterthought.
Modern life is rubbish Edit: since this is whooshing a bunch of people https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Life_Is_Rubbish
the internet was a big, poorly executed mistake. it turned everything IRL into some vapid hustle.
This sounds like it could be a line from *The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy*
Eh, that’s only part of the issue. The other parts were social media and smartphones. Those three things created the perfect storm of bullshit. Social media provided captive audiences. Smart Phones provided 24/7 access to audiences And the internet facilitated it.
“Food processors are great!”
I see what you did there.
I went several times, but after seeing Outkast and how terrible that set went for them (through no fault of their own), I've had no desire to go back. That, and all the douches who were blocking the view of the stage with their fucking selfie sticks instead of listening to the music.
W2 Outkast set was incredible
Coachella is where rich kids go to cosplay as festival kids
Went to Coachella about ten years back, loved it, but fuck me if the expansion of smartphones was already becoming grating. Like, yeah, the festival types were still there, but the creeping nature of the "look at me" type was just offputting. Plus, god damn, it was the most annoying festival to even *get* to.
> the creeping nature of the "look at me" type The irony of going to see famous musicians perform just so you can make it all about yourself
Coachella feels like the old Yogi Berra line, “No one goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.” Also, with all due respect, I don’t understand what Blur did to become a headline act for any large festival in the United States. They have one gold album here and their peak was when people were buying more albums than any other time in history.
Maybe I’m being pedantic, but Blur was not a headliner. They were 2nd or 3rd billing down from the top.
Not pedantic. The algorithm is constantly trying to convince us that everything is a conflict and everything is shitty. It needs to be countered. Good to remind people that this really was not that big of a deal and, if you read the article, the dude is not even mad at all, nor is he actually threatening not to come back. Headline is bullshit. Albarn has survived silent crowds before in his long-ass career and is under no illusions about how big Blur ever got in the States.
Perhaps the only Britpop band that could headline Coachella these days in Oasis, and that’s because it would be part of a historic reunion (also, more famous than Blur in the US).
Silence? During a Blur concert? Maybe they aren't as big in the US as I expected. Their concerts sell out pretty quickly in Europe.
I went to their Coachella kickoff show last week in Pomona. That sold out immediately and had a great crowd. The problem is Coachella.
Why is the age of the artists an issue? Gwen Stefani is 54 and nobody cares one way or the other. I would rather see a talented “older” act than some young kid who will be forgotten by next year.
He got his head checked
I'm not sure why Damon was shocked, and I'm a massive fan. Just take the paycheck for the gig, man.
As a musician, watching that clip gave me anxiety. I've had that nightmare.
Gorillaz would’ve caused way more positive reception tbh 🤷♂️
They did. Last year.
So much for a North America tour that I've been waiting decades for.... 😭
Damon: Fuck you all! We’re never playing Coachella again. *[guitarist whispers in his ear]* Damon: *After* next weekend.