Summer Soltice Season Reprise: Pitbull Show Recap

Is it June, I mean July 19th already? I have gotten the most out of the summer outdoor (and indoor) concert / fest season while it has lasted. I was not going to post this a month later but I am anyway. It's worth sharing. I think I am still recovering from the damn Pitbull show, and I think his web managers are too. They have only posted one story since the show at Summerfest on June 28th. The show in Milwaukee was extra live, and I have seen a lot of shows in my day. Here's the recap...


Pitbull barks hard and bites harder

If it wasn't obvious what the Pitbull show was all about, something is very wrong with your cognition of body language. I was packed in tighter where I was standing than the cornucopia of glutes on stage that were stuffed into spandex thong singlets and sequined Carnaval showgirl costumes. I'll give you a hint, at fifteen rows back and ten feet off of the seating area, I could barely see the top of Pitbull's shaved dome. Did it really matter?

A true testament to a music artist’s pull is the turnout they draw on an off-night like Monday. Seriously, any day, any time, except Sunday morning, Mr. 305 could have shut the Brew down. 3/5 parts honeymoon for his latest album Rebelution, 1/5 part ode to his fans, 1/5 part charging the air with lust because he can, Pitbull early on broke into Triumph, a single-worthy anthem from his newest joint. Fans were feeling it, but they responded most to the hard tracks like Calle Ocho, Hotel Room Service and WATAGATAPITUSBERRY.

While people were loosing their minds jumping up to the song KRAZY, bouncing, popping, shaking, and thrusting without millimeters separating appendages and supplely cleaved muscle groups, Pitbull was saturating his marquee skinny tuxedo, the first of which was some kind of blackish-purple, which quickly liquefied into deep violet from repeated end-to-end gallops of the stage, weaving between booty dancers and hype-men alike that were donning head dresses of mohawked multi-colored feathers; some standing on hydraulic stilts giving them the Jar Jar Binks gait.

A set break ensued. At the crowd’s impatient beckoning, in the nick of time, Pitbull emerged through the stage lighting, starting this round in a perfectly good white tux before spitting classic cuts like Go Girl, Mentirosa, and neos like Shut It Down. Mr. 305 had intentions of mongering perspiration like that Axe commercial, as he gyrated dangerously parallel to the stage apron, caring little for the condition of his ankles, Achilles tendons or cumber bun.

Without warning there was a planned power outage, and Pitbull disappeared, only to come back on cue with the rest of his entertainment squad. What happened next can only be described as utterly ridiculous. Pitbull unleashes a cover of the LMFAO ditty Shots, and the secret to world peace is revealed, as every person in sight went absolutely AWOL, jumping in unison like newly freed South Africans.

The show mercifully ended, no one could even scream for another encore. Groups and solo exhibitionists all-the-way to the main promenade, with bloodthirsty gazes, refused to stop dancing: swaying their hips, hands waving and mouths screeching. Last I looked, from the back of the Harley area, the front areas of the stands(it had become an entity unto itself) still overflowing unfurled a Mexican flag, stubbornly cheered and pulsated in the glare of the illuminating flood lights. For all I know the party is still going on. Even Pitbull had to admit Milwaukee is KRAZY. Dale!

Airing It Out!!!

I never imagined how much fun I would have partaking in the spectacle that someone else's dream built... but I did. The US Air Guitar Championships tour made an emergency stop in Milwaukee, between jaunts to Cleveland and Minneapolis. This is serious business and the faithful die hard. Luckily the Milwaukee stop was just an exhibition thus allowing me to mime a rendition of Devo's Whip It with a couple friends (aptly dubbed the Furious Danger Purple Kangaroo Band).

Mid riff, I dashed into the crowd and managed to free a lamp shade from a rather curvy lamp, before knocking the lamp part to the floor. The prop increased the Devo affect 15 fold...

This type of outing was definitely worth the time on a Friday night. In addition to the comedy that is air guitar, I also worked myself out of breath on the air drums, as well as, the air bass and guitar. The cardio-vascular aspect relieved any guilt I did not have post performance. Bonus!!!

So I guess these two guys just started doing this one day... one is named Hot Nix Hulahan (while at the karaoke console, he personally gave me the nod of approval for the lamp shade stunt) and the other Bjorn Turoque. Thank you for bringing novelty to an participatory entertainment form that had lost its novelty. If only I remembered my camera!

I definitely plan to check out the movie. So many nations with in a nation! The US Air Guitar website has a schedule on the main page... so it may be in your town soon!

Cool Eating: Rockabilly Chili Contest

College radio giant 91.7 WMSE is hosting a chili contest fundraiser in early March. I [heart] chilli and I [heart] WMSE enough to don two bumper stickers on my vehicular, so I guess I will have to attend. Plenty of local restaurants will compete including mainstays like Beans & Barely and Milwaukee Ale House, but also local favorites like the Bremen Cafe, and unknown to me's like Hotch-A-Do. The event has and admission of $6 and $1 charge for chili samples but it's for a good cause.

If you're from Milwaukee and over the age of 30, you know the only place on the FM airwaves you could get the illest in underground, above ground and unappreciated rap beats was 91.7 WMSE. First it was 'K-J the D-J' that used to come on once a week at about 12:30am (only original true masters know what night it was, I'm not giving all the gems away). I was a middle schooler back then and to catch the full broadcast I would have to set a cassette tape to record all night and position my boombox just-right next to the window to get reception. Then Mike J featuring Pitt and the Pendulum took over, they held down the time slot proper through the late 90's until, I stopped following them around the turn of the century. This fool Pitt had the only feature length "black" karate movie at the time, I wonder if you could still get it from somewhere. Now-a-days the Saturday Afternoon Boogie Bang carries the baton for hip-hop heads, with cameos by local legend Doc B.

Ninety-nine percent of the station's programming is non-urban music and worth supporting. You get seldom exposed glimpses of all genres from indie rock to instrumental to Lo-Fi slop rock (it's punk music with a bad show name). WMSE definitely keeps my music diet regular. Too much Daughtry and all that ganster-pop r&b mash that is served on the commercial stations can get you mentally constipated. Thanks to the internet you can tune in anytime and anywhere you can get a broadband signal. Rockabilly Chili Contest will take place Sunday March 9, 2009 from 11:00am to 4:00pm at the Milwaukee School of Engineering Kern Center, 1245 N. Broadway in downtown Milwaukee.