HDNinja are joined by many guests
After my epic, four part recap of Nerdapalooza 2012, I’ll try to keep this report on the shorter side. Once Nerdapalooza was over, there was still a bit more geek music to come. Monday night brought us The Day After concert at The Haven. A few artists from Nerdapalooza performed again, but mostly the artists were different.
Actually, before I get to The Day After, I’ll briefly mention that my own weekend of geek music actually began on Thursday here in Gainesville, FL. Eight artists, mostly from Scrub Club Records, performed at The Laboratory. I mention this because all eight also performed at The Day After. The artists were: Project Zero, StarF, sAMPLE tHE mARTIAN, Shinobi MC with Shammers, HD Ninja, Magitek, King Pheenix, and Epic-1. Several of the artists were completely new to me; I was really impressed with Project Zero, sAMPLE tHE mARTIAN, and Magitek. I really enjoy StarF’s lyrics, but his vocals are just OK, in my opinion. He does put on a good show, though. The first two times I saw King Pheenix, he had technical difficulties that threw him off, but he absolutely killed it at The Day After. He’s such an impressive rapper; it was good to see him at his best.
My Parents Favorite Music
Other artists that performed on Monday that I hadn’t heard before include My Parents Favorite Music (with Prof. ShyGuy on one song), Frog Suit (roughly the same band), Whoremoans (who replaced Soup or Villainz and whose lead singer’s voice was pretty blown which was too bad), and JPHONIC. All of them are bands that I plan to explore more in the future, but I have to say I was actually most impressed with JPHONIC. As an English teacher, I really loved his literate lyrics, and I was kind of surprised that fewer people seemed to appreciate his music (based on the number of people on the “dance floor”). I have a feeling no one really knew him, but I’ll bet that will change in the future.
Klopfenpop and NES-T
The rest of the artists were (nearly) all ones I’d heard of before, but I’d only seen a couple of them live. Klopfenpop was joined by a female rapper named NES-T (great name!) which was really great; I’ve mentioned before that there’s a dearth of female geek musicians so it’s good to have a new one. Plus they performed “Don’t Panic,” which was so cool. Rappy McRapperson and MC Wreckshin were as fun and ridiculous as you’d expect, and Emergency Pizza Party was also great (I’ve mentioned before that I really like them better live than on their studio stuff, and this show reinforced that).
Random and YTCracker (with Hairetsu) performed impressive new sets, fresh off their sets at Nerdapalooza. The Former Fat Boys were represented by just one member, but it was a really awesome set. I was only somewhat familiar with their music, and I’ve already started checking out more. He played his videos behind him on the screen while performing, but during “Shake Yo Dicks” he went a little further. Let’s just say he wore exactly the same outfit he wore during the video. Yeah, that was… interesting.
The final headliner, and the main reason I had to drive to Winter Park, was MC Lars. Like The Former Fat Boys, he performed with his videos playing in the background. He pulled out some old songs (“Generic Crunk Rap”) as well as a couple from the recent Edgar Allan Poe EP. Plus he turned out to be a really nice guy; he was especially interested in talking literature when I mentioned I was an English teacher.
I decided to head back to the hotel after Lars’s set; the smoke in The Haven was getting to me, plus I did have to drive two hours the next morning. I’m sure I missed some great music during the Afterparty Dance, but at least I got to see what I wanted to see. If you get a chance to see absolutely any of the performers from The Day After, I would definitely recommend you do so.
