On Thursday night, September 20th, Steez promo, NV concepts, and Mass EDMC brought a lineup of epic proportions to Philly with headliners Zedd and Lucky Date and opening sets by Khadafi Dub and Speaker of the House & Amenzo.
The doors opened at 9pm with a small line waiting anxiously to get inside. First up was local Philly producer Speaker of the House alongside Amenzo. Who is Speaker of the House? Just one of the most up and coming producers in the city. If you haven’t heard of him, look him up – the bandwagon has left the station, but its not too late to catch a ride. Speaker of the House and Amenzo played from 9-10pm to a great sized crowd for the first hour of the show. Having an arsenal of original mixes at their disposal, they had the crowd going crazy. When the clock hit 10pm things would only get more wild.
Up next was Khadafi Dub. Khadafi Dub, who just recently was awarded the title of “Best Dubstep MC/Host” at the 2012 Dubstep Music Awards, played a mixture of trap music and dubstep. Regardless of the genre of music, he played banger after banger that had the entire crowd, which at this point was filling in most of the dance floor, going absolutely nuts.
Up next was Lucky Date. As if the energy was not already high enough in the venue, Lucky played such great music that the crowd just didn’t know what to expect next. If concert goers are wondering why they were so sore the next day, they should point fingers in Lucky Date’s direction. Amazingly, the night was nowhere close to being over.
At 1215pm German born Anton Zaslavski, aka Zedd, made his way out onto the stage. At only 22 years of age, Zedd, who was labeled a “prodigy” by the New York Times, has come a long way in an incredibly short amount of time. Playing alongside big names such as Skrillex and Deadmau5, Zedd has quickly become a world-class DJ with a bright future ahead of him. Once on stage, Zedd quickly began playing incredible songs one after another. And while many call Dillon Francis a party animal for his wild on stage antics (such as getting up on stage and giving Zedd himself the middle finger at a Los Angeles club) Zedd showed that he has a sense of humor as well with his track collection. Its not everyday that a DJ puts a remix to “Who let the dogs out” or “I like to move it move it” in their set. With the attention of the audience completely captivated, Zedd played until about 145am. When Zedd left the stage, the audience had only one hope left, scream, yell, chant, and shout as loud as they possibly could with the hopes that Zedd would come back out for one more song. Guess what? It worked.
Zedd walked back on stage, grabbed the mic, and screamed, “Philly! I fucking love you! You guys are awesome!”. He then said, “I am going to play you my favorite song in the whole world!”…(if you have seen the video of Zedd and Skillex after Ezoo, you may know where this is going)… he then played the beginning of Avicii’s Levels, picked up the mic, and said, “this is Levels by the Swedish House Mafia!”. The crowd loved it. After levels played for a about 30 seconds, he quickly transitioned into his “actual favorite song in the world”, and gave the audience exactly what they wanted.
Starlight Ballroom is a far cry from the fancier venues that have popped up around the city in recent years. It’s the type of place in which patrons are guaranteed to taste the steaming, hot, sticky sweat dripping off of the people dancing nearby. But you know what? Sometimes its nice to be treated to a world-class DJ in a setting reminiscent of the times of yesteryear, when “EDM” was not an everyday term and was still an underground movement whose concerts weren’t even called concerts but just simply, “raves”.
And while Skrillex has his spaceship, Avicii his massive human head, Datsik his vortex, and Deadmau5 his Cube, Zedd reminded us all that you don’t need to perform in high-tech futuristic fashion in order to succeed. While a show is all about the experience, we tend to forget that its really about the music, not the lights, lasers and strobes. Zedd played with a constant smile on his face. Why? Because it is clear that he is doing what he loves, and his fans love him for that. Zedd doesn’t need a multi-million dollar stage setup to have a good time, and neither did we. We commend Zedd for staying true to what this movement is truly all about, the music.
[photos and article by Steve Garfinkel]
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