Observations on the Road to...

Monday, November 2, 2009

A supreme Halloween 2009: Justice!

Hands down, one of the best Halloween celebrations I've ever had. The entire night was absolutely amazing. When we first got to the Shrine, CLASSIX was already about half way through their set, and one of the first tracks we heard from them was a remix to Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Heads Will Roll, which pretty much got my friends and I up and going as far as dancing, and we kept dancing all night long, like you would not believe. When it drew time for Steve Aoki's set, I was ready to hear some Bloody Beetroots. Even though, we came to Hard only for Saturday, and not see the Beetroots on Friday, we still got our fix with Aoki's set, and it was simply fucking awesome.

Up until this point, I was dancing for sure. But hearing Aoki do a remix to Kid Cudi's Pursuit of Happiness sent me into overdrive like you cannot imagine, and I mean maximum. Without question, it's the my favorite track off Cudi's album, and I danced/ spit the lyrics out like there was no tomorrow. Eventually, Aoki busted out the Warps: 7.7, then later on with 1.9 to finish things off like a house on fire.

When Warp 7.7 started, I admitted to Dang that I preferred it over 1.9, and as much as I might really believe that, my legs and body went ballistic a couple songs later when 1.9 finished things up for Aoki, and I just jumped in the air like the people in the song's music video. Having the space to do so because we made our way closer to the back, with more crowd space, so thank goodness we started heading to the back when we did.

At any large musical gathering, there is always going to be conflict schedules, and tough decisions will have to be made. On this night, it was between Justice and Crookers.

Crookers inside on the Expo Stage, and Justice outside on the Hard Stage. As much as I love Crookers, it was gonna be Justice all the way. Justice did not disappoint. Gaspard and Xavier came out dressed a couple of pilots straight out of Top Gun, and of course along with them their large, glowing cross, and proceeded to blow us the fuck away.

I've only seen Justice live once before, at last year's Treasure Island Fest, but I've some friends who have seen them multiple times, and as great as seeing Justice live, they had yet to see a switch or change up to how their set goes...

A tweaked remix to Genesis started things off, and we all knew Justice was definitely gonna do things differently this time around. Things were so crazy I didn't even get to meet up with a friend I was hoping to, but I did get to text this: "dunno when you'll get this, but 10mins into Justice, and I'm sure you would agree that they are
fucking killing it!"

Screaming the lyrics to DVNO was a highlight for me considering the damn song has been stuck in my head for the last couple weeks now. But now... I really, really don't think it's gonna be leaving my brain's memory banks anytime soon. As the set went on, we inched ourselves closer to the stage, hearing the guys spin, scratch, and distort all of the beats and lyrics to their songs that my friends and I have come to love, all in totally new ways we haven't heard before. Amazing. My shoulders are sore from raising my arms in the air all damn night long. Yeah, amazing is the right word.

The night, let alone Justice's set, was a big giant blur. Which most of the time, is a great indication of how much fun the whole thing was. 2MANYDJS/SOULWAX, who also performed on Friday night took the Hard Stage following Justice. They had a great set, which included their remix to MGMT's Kids, but I was still reeling from Justice's supreme set. There were definitely some other highlights, including the fact that there were so many other Where's Waldo costumes out there on Saturday... I knew there was a good chance I wasn't going to be the only one, but surprised that there were so many. Again, pretty awesome. I don't think I've ever had a Halloween quite this fun before, and next year will definitely be difficult to top.