Day Two Hundred and Thirty - Deadmau5: Meowingtons Hax 2k11 Toronto, "I followed up Queen with THIS?!"

After the rocking good time I had with Queen: Rock Montreal, I was kind of in the mood for more music. As such, I popped over to the next concert movie that was in my Queue and it just happened to be Deadmau5's final stop in Toronto for his Meowingtons Hax tour.

Wow... I was thoroughly disappointed going from one to the other.

* - and other substances

Now, don't get me wrong... I love electronic music to death and think Deadmau5's tunes are excellent examples of progressive-house. There is something entirely danceable to his tracks, for certain... but without that rave mentality, strictly as a concert movie, they all fall utterly flat.

It's all the same beats over and over. Occasionally something new and interesting will be thrown in, such as when Sofi starts adding her vocals to the tracks, but without all the booze* and tightly pressed, dancing flesh, Joel's sets are just exercises in sound. There's no fire, no stage presence, and barely any visuals.

A lot of props have been given to him for his "cubes" that he has on stage, but not once did I see anything interesting displayed on them... just occasional flashes of his trademark mouse-ears and geometric shapes that looks like they're straight from a windows screensaver.

Hang on, hang on... I've go something stuck to my shoe!

I think that my main complaint with the show is when he leaves his machines for a good five to ten minutes to run down a gangway with Sofi while she sings.

I mean, seriously? You just put your loops on repeat and start flailing about like a stoned moron? WTF?

It was one thing when Queen left the stage in Montreal during the operatic section of Bohemian Rhapsody for all of two minutes while the layered harmonies (that couldn't be performed live) played out... and it was quite another to see Joel flip a switch and saunter down the gangplank, hamming it up with ludicrous poses and ill-timed fist pumps.

Un-freaking-believable.

The very definition of YOLO. :(

Then there was the crowd... which seemed more interested in holding their iPhones up and recording the sets than actually jamming out to the music. Instead of a 20,000 strong rave full of pulsating bodies to go along with the beat, every crowd shot had wannabes with their hands held high purely to capture video. The worst of it was when I saw someone slide a DSLR up an extension arm to get a shot ten feet above the crowd.

I tell ya, kids these days.

At the end of the day, I would only recommend this set to have on in the background as something to tap your toes to when you're doing something else. It lacks pretty much everything that makes a concert movie great and is only redeeming as a soundtrack to something else entirely... like say a game night.

Lord, what I wouldn't give for Daft Punk's Alive concerts to be on the Stream... now those dudes know how to put on a live techno concert.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~