For a while I sat onstage with my friend Alex as Rusko, the opening DJs and the Live Experience set up.  Someone announced that Rusko had “fired” Traktor and that tonight was the first time he was using Serato live.

The Live Experience finished soundcheck and disappeared backstage.  I found them in a room with some couches and we talked for 15 minutes about how the band formed, etc etc etc, and other basic information that you are pretty much obligated to ask about if there is no information/body of literature about the group, which there isn’t.  So now I have established that basic body of literature and the next person to interview them can go deeper.  The Glorious Process of Journalism.

The Live Experience guys were very nice and down to Earth.  I like where their heads are at.  They started playing together a couple of years ago but this was only their fifth show.  One of their members, Michael Jackson, said that the group’s goal is to never play in front of fewer than a thousand people so they can get a lot of exposure without touring constantly, which would take time away from each of the members other musical endeavors.  Makes sense.  The Live Experience is Michael Jackson, Charlie P, Daniel McBeezy and Michaelangelo, and they perform by drumming and playing guitar over an Ableton set.

At the end of the interview I thanked the band members and left Masquerade since they weren’t going to be on for more than an hour anyway.  It was a little after 9 pm and the first DJ was on, a kid from UGA who was playing things like Shots and the Bed Intruder song.  There was already a cluster of people who got their early and I’ve got to hand it to the kid he had them jumping.  I went with Alex to the Kroger nearby and we each bought a can of Four Loko.

Alex threw his out after two sips because he said it tasted disgusting.  He wanted me to try his so I could see how bad it was and what he had endured but I said no thanks I trust you it must be bad.  His flavor was fruit punch so I guess don’t get that one.  Mine was blue raspberry it was ok.  We walked down some dimly lit street near Masquerade which led to a bunch of derelict warehouses.  I chose this moment to share that the last time Rusko came to Atlanta someone got shot.  Murdered, in fact.  A tinted-out black Infiniti drove by, inexplicably, and for a moment I thought we were going to get stomped because really there was no reason anyone should be driving back here.  But it turned around and left without harming us.

There are some stairs that extend from outside Masquerade to Heaven.  We sat on this Stairway to Heaven as I finished getting Loko.

Inside, the second opening DJ was on.  DJ Megan Foxx.  Don’t let the name fool you he is a fat white guy.  He was playing some heavy ass dubstep more Reso than Rusko not really my thing blargh but people were digging it.

The Live Experience came on at 11 and played for nearly an hour.  They killed it.  Michaelangelo, their guitarist and frontman, kind of, moved around the stage like he was in some sort of spiritual trance.  He was wearing a long black skirt, which may have contributed to my spiritual/tribal image of him.  Anyway.  Their set was more computer dominated and less instrumental than an STS9 or Disco Biscuits set, which makes sense because their only non-percussion non-computer instrument is a guitar.  They played a lot dubstep and other up-tempo electronic-y stuff.  Not breaks or drum and bass though, just…electronic.  No genre for it yet.  It sounded great and the crowd, possibly 1000 people, loved it.

The drumming was on point.  At first I was apprehensive that it might be redundant or pointless to have two people, sometimes three (Michaelangelo would ditch his guitar and join MJ sometimes) on percussion, especially when drumming can be so easily incorporated into the computer, but it added a lot of energy to the performance that the crowd tapped into.  There is something very unbridled and bestial about hitting things with sticks, I think it gets people moving.  The audience danced hard.

Rusko started to play with no gap at all between the end of The Live Experience’s set and the beginning of his.  It was very un-apparent that he was using Serato for the first time; everything sounded fine.  His set went for 100 minutes or so and it was a lot of fun.  He played all the hits, saving Hold On and Cockney Thug for the end; people flipped a shit.  He is without a doubt the most energetic DJ I have seen.  Perhaps the most energetic of any performer I’ve seen.  Well maybe not but you get the point.  At one point I scrawled in my near-illegible notes in, “mofo [that being Rusko] has more energy than the CROWD.”  Which might not seem that newsworthy, but really how often is it that you see a performer who is dancing with more fervor than the crowd?  Not often.  He was humping and pumping and extending middle fingers all night.  The very picture of rebellion.

Which makes sense.  His style of performing fits with the image I had constructed of him, which was formed largely by the impertinence of Cockney Thug (its vocal sample, wompy synth part and gadfly-esque trumpets) and his telling deadmau5 that he would snap the “skinny little cunt” in two the next time he saw him.  Basically he’s a brash motherfucker, he plays brash music, and he performs with brash mannerisms.  What you see is what you get.

The concert ended.  My ears were ringing.  The end.