Whatchumagenre

Once again sorry for the lack of posting. Things are just going very slowly around the music scene. I’d have to say that it’s probably because everyone is at Lollapalooza right now. Everyone’s at Lollapalooza… except yours truly. Oh well, there’s always next year, right? Though I wasn’t there physically, I did catch a performance or two from the AT&T Blueroom’s Live stream of the event. Of the bands I wanted to see, they showed few. In fact, they only showed one: Bloc Party. All in all it was a pretty typical Bloc Party concert. Towards the end of the show, Kele even threatened to play something new and different, only to let the crowd–and myself–down. He got us all hyped up and then… “Oops. Sorry. Change of plans.” Thanks, Kele.

But aside from the ordinary, there were a few notable differences. For one, as some of you may or may not know, Bloc Party’s bass player, Gordon Moakes, and his wife, are having (actually they’ve had) a baby. So they brought in a replacement until the end of the U.S. tour this year. He wasn’t bad. From what I could tell, he didn’t screw up once. The vocals were, noticably “un-Moakes-y,” but apart from that I had no qualms. He did his job as a temperary replacement.

Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the longest time, I’m sure you’ve heard by now Bloc Party’s newest hit, Mercury. Mercury is an insanely different approach to what the boys from London are known for. I was dying to know how this would sound live. Well, now I know. It wasn’t that bad. Err, until Matt Tong and that other guy started their background vocals. It sounded awful. It was like a cat getting continually run over (“From Silver Lake to Williamsburg/ a-a-voice crack-a”). But towards the second half of the song, they turned it around, and it didn’t seem so bad (that is, if you were a fan of the song prior to). Final verdict: Mercury live… no more.

Finally, a few posts below you’ll see the whole Kele Okereke vs John Lydon thing. Looking at Kele on stage, he really didn’t seem as “fucked up” as I would have expect. I don’t know if he’s healed by now, or if it’s a you-can-only-see-it-in-person kind of a deal, but he looked fine (now) from what I saw.

Video: “Mercury” – Bloc Party (Live at 2008 Lollapalooza)
Video: The rest of the performance – Bloc Party (Live at 2008 Lollapalooza)

UPDATE!: Matt Tong has bitchin’ shorts!