Deadmau5 disappoints (almost) no one at LiveCity Olympic party

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      Deadmau5

      At LiveCity Yaletown on Friday, February 19

      If you were among the thousands unable to get into Deadmau5’s maximum-capacity stand at Yaletown’s LiveCity site on Friday, take some solace in the fact that more than one person at the show left bitterly disappointed. Or, to be more specific, three people.

      How could you tell, given that every one of the 8,000-plus people on site seemed nothing less than deliriously thrilled? That’s easy—you only had to head over to the guest-services tent. There, on the ground next to a small mountain of skateboards and backpacks, sat three giant mouse heads, each of which the proggy Ontario DJ known as Deadmau5 would have been proud to have worn on his cranium.

      Imagine showing up primed to pay the ultimate tribute to the man known to his mom as Joel Zimmerman, only to be told to check your lovingly constructed rodent head by security. Sometimes life is crueller than a Victor glue trap.

      As for the rest of the crowd, nobody left Deadmau5 disappointed; as love-ins go, this one was pretty much off the chart from the moment Zimmerman stormed out on-stage, sporting a Team Canada jersey and—predictably—a giant mouse head on his noggin. Over the course of an hour-and-a-half set with plenty of emotional peaks and valleys, Deadmau5 would make it clear that he’s anything but a one-trick pony.

      Ambient washes of tangerine-dream electronica would suddenly explode into glitter-spackelled house anthems. One minute Zimmerman was resculpting Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name” as a jagged tribal thumper, the next he was unleashing waves of keyboards, the effect suggesting Rick Wakeman with a trance fixation. Just when things would start to seem like a neverending bass-and-drums assault, he’d veer left with the synth-swept “Sometimes Things Get, Whatever”.

      What might have been most surprising about it all was that Deadmau5 looked like he was having almost as much fun as his enraptured fans. When he talked to the Straight last year, the Niagara Falls, Ontario native made a point of painting himself as a pathological introvert, someone who hates interacting with people he’s never met.

      He’s obviously come out of his shell, spending much of the night wildly pumping his fists, whether going for something grandly ostentatious with an epic “Ghosts ’n’ Stuff” or deftly riffing on Daft Punk’s “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger”.

      Forget hunching over a laptop and hiding behind a mask: Deadmau5 was determined to turn things into an event. First off there was the visual bombardment—1950s robots, ’60s space missions, The Shining snippets, bouncing rodent faces—taking place on the two screens that flanked the stage.

      Putting a human face on the proceedings, the mouse head would come off periodically over the course of the night, revealing a tattied-and-pierced dude who looked more like a Boston street punk than one of the world’s top DJs. From that point, Zimmerman put on an old-fashioned show, dancing like a back-bacon version of Keith Flint, conducting the audience like a big-beat Leonard Bernstein, and doing the 20-yard-dash to the side of the stage for cold Coronas.

      Evidently a multitasker, he would even prove his own highly effective hype man, donning the mouse head every now and then and then positioning himself at the front of the stage where he’d bust a move to music of his own making.

      And he wasn’t alone as far as shaking his ass. Basically LiveCity Yaletown was a giant dance party from start to finish. Cool as this was if you were in the middle of the throng, things looked even more incredible from the back of the venue. This view ended up on the giant video screens flanking the stage more than once during the course of the evening, and it was nothing less than awe-inspiring: 8,000 people totally losing their shit at the feet of a giant rodent.

      Vancouver still has a lot of partying left to do this Olympic run. This one might prove impossible to top.

      Comments

      11 Comments

      rob

      Feb 20, 2010 at 1:48pm

      "8,000 people totally losing their shit at the feet of a giant rodent."

      HAHA, pretty much sums it up! amazing night

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      DR--Montreal

      Feb 20, 2010 at 3:55pm

      Wow, that's pretty damn lame eh? RATM he is not, and Prodigy he is not... but those are big shoes to walk in, so perhaps Zimmerman showed some humility in donning the Mickey Mouse head. Or maybe he isn't photogenic.
      On the other hand who cares?

      Even so, it *works* for this observer as a synecdoche for the larger farce.

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      ooh-some!

      Feb 20, 2010 at 4:53pm

      ooh-some, thanks for the u-tube scoop!

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      Zaggy

      Feb 20, 2010 at 6:29pm

      Wish I'd gone. Apparently there were 20,000 people left outside the venue though. So aprox. 28000 people showed up. (He tweeted that he would turn it up so people outside could hear, and he did xD)

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      Deadmau5 fan

      Feb 20, 2010 at 11:29pm

      “Sometimes Things Get Complicated”
      It's called "Sometimes Things Get, Whatever".
      Really enjoyed the concert. Not as good as his previous concerts here, but it was free and he was drunk. So even if the music was lacking, the experience was still great.

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      Mike Usinger

      Feb 20, 2010 at 11:46pm

      Hi Deadmau5 Thanks for that catch. I've changed now in the story.

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      MS UBC

      Feb 22, 2010 at 5:24am

      Not to be a downer, but the livecity venue could have been a lot better.

      Not to knock the french music that was playing earlier, but it didn't really jive with the genre that deadmau5 was playing.. but that was the least of my concerns.

      No smoking was allowed within the concert grounds, if you did smoke, you would have to do so outside, only to re-enter the line; not to matter, good thing I quit smoking.

      Also, no alcohol was sold.. That was very disheartening, but its okay because I drank in line.

      The show ended too early to make a full night of it, but too late to get into any bars or clubs without waiting in gross lines; good thing it was the olympics and there was a street party.

      Also, the music wasnt nearly loud enough.. but that's probably from my loss of hearing from raving to him a couple times before.

      From the people I have spoken with, I'd say quite a few of them would agree with my sentiments, but we all still had a wicked time. Deadmau5 was great and didn't disappoint. It was just poor concert organization. But I can't complain, after all, the concert was free.. just sayin' it coulda been done better :)

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      Jay Dee

      Feb 28, 2010 at 2:52am

      Good thing no alcool was sold at the concert. You don't give alcohol to people who are already moronic and who threw coke bottles at the singer of the first band because they were from Qc and they were singing a different kind of music than that faggety techno shit.

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      Andrew

      Mar 9, 2010 at 3:50pm

      Is his set floating around on the Internet? Did he play Faxing Berlin???

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      Alicia Rae Light

      Apr 5, 2010 at 2:22pm

      Mike, this is awesome. I missed him in Vancouver sadly, but got to see him in Whistler where nearly the entire population of the town was standing outside in rain in the medals plaza going crazy! Too bad they took away their mouse heads, how devastating. The coolest one I saw in Whistler was all electric with read flashing Canadian flags on it. And Joel was definitely not acting the part of an introvert on stage like he told the Straight last year, glad he's grown out of it!

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