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Justice, Diplo, and Fancy at the Concourse Exhibition Center
Concourse Exhibition Center, San Francisco, CA
March 27, 2008
 My concert drought hasn't exactly been washed away in a flood of live music ... in fact if it wasn't for Veronica's polite urgings to come to the city to do something social, i would probably still be lamenting my musical isolation. However, V was able to secure tickets to current electronica darlings Justice through her pal Gabe of SonicLiving. We met up with him and friend Margaret in front of the SoMa Concourse Exhibition Center. I've been to this venue for shows a few times, yet oddly reviewing my concert list i can't find them. My immediate explanation is that i probably abstained from reporting because this place is awful. Just not designed for holding a concert. The stage is at the end of a long, rectangular convention hall, and people pack towards the stage like that scene in Willy Wonks and the Chocolate Factory where the factory visitors walk through a door into a dead end hallway. The acoustics of the room are therefore such that those standing towards the back to avoid the crowd are treated to a mottled, muddy version of whatever comes out of the speakers at the front. V proposed to our little group that we start a petition to ban concerts from being put on here. We arrived just as openers Fancy were coming on. I heard shades of Neon Blonde's high-pitched rawk, sans the artier elements. After buying a cheeseburger and getting a bit closer to the stage, i found they were decked out in their best Blade Runner extra duds. We hung out with some of Gabe's compatriots until Diplo came on. The DJ spun a hour-long set that owed more than inspiration to mid-90's rave ... for the first twenty minutes i was wondering if he was one of the Utah Saints. His music was decent, although exactly what separated his remix of the Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up" from the original, i don't know. He had an annoying tendency to speak over his set over ten minutes or so, querying the crowd with some variation of "San Francisco, come on, y'all!" This phrase was further beaten into the ground when Diplo spun at the Popscene-hosted after party. We passed some of the time watching the crowd, which Gabe accurately described as looking like a collection of mySpace pictures. Fittingly, the venue had a bank of computer terminals set up along the wall designed for connecting to mySpace. I was approached between sets by two slurring blondes, one of whom put her hand on my shoulder and slowly asked me, "we know this may be a weird question, but, what city are we in?" I resisted the urge to answer "Bombay" and sent the chemically-enhanced pair away with the correct response. The French duo of Justice came on stage around 10:20pm, a glowing cross having been placed in front of their elevated DJ booth, sandwiched between two walls of Marshall amps. Not quite the extravagant stage set of their countrymen, peers, and most obvious measuring stick Daft Punk. I was expecting a set of more funky, 70's-esque mellow grooves like their hit single "D.A.N.C.E.", but to my surprise Justice's performance focused on harder, thumping beats. Even the aforementioned track was delivered in a broken beat style. I danced through most of the show, although the duo lost a bit of pace towards the end. Gabe and i were wondering about the significance of Christian imagery with the band ... the album is entitled ✝, and they've got a big cross on stage). Interestingly, the starter of the encore used a stylized sample of Metallica's "Master of Puppets", an album that also relies heavily on Christian symbols. All in all, a worthwhile use of a Thursday night.
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