August 25, 2007
PAX 2007
Concert Series: Friday Night
By:
Steven Hopper
Freezepop enthralls the crowd for their
biggest show ever.
Yesterday was the first day of the Penny Arcade
Expo, marking a convergence of gamers in the Washington State Convention Center
in Seattle, Washington to get their hands on the latest and greatest in the
world of video games. It also marks the first night of concerts held the nights
of the show. The party started with a bang, with a four band line-up including
The OneUps, Optimus Rhyme, Freezepop, and The NESkimos. While the festivities
went pretty late, the shows were great and really kept the audience on their
feet until the wee hours of the morning.
The show opened with The OneUps, a funk-rock jam
band that had their own takes on popular theme songs from the gaming days of
yore. An instrumental group with two guitarists, a keyboardist, bassist,
violinist, drummer, and saxophonist, the group added some jazz-infusion to their
long takes on the likes of Super Mario Bros., Punch-Out!!!, Sonic the Hedgehog,
and Chrono Trigger. Even though they were the first band of the night, The
OneUps managed to really get the crowd going, all while showing gameplay footage
from the games that they were covering on a screen at the side of the stage.
Some of the highlights from their set were the Tetris theme, which had the
entire audience clapping along to the beat, a funky version of the Air Man stage
music from Mega Man II, and a few songs from the bassist’s and keyboardist’s
electronic side-project, Final Fanboy, which included a medley of Silent Hill
and Final Fantasy VI songs. The set was fluid with very few pauses between
songs, and did a great job of getting the crowd ready for what was to come.
Next on the deck was Optimus Rhyme, offering
their particular brand of nerd-rap with punk/rock edges. The crowd really got
into the group, who played a tight set of songs and exhibited some great stage
energy. They brought out a couple of special guests throughout their set,
including MC Frontalot (due on the stage on Saturday night) to sing a rousing
rendition of “Ping Pong Song” that had the whole audience getting into the game,
so to speak.
However, for many members of the crowd, the show
didn’t truly begin until Freezepop hit the stage. Like three 80’s kids weaned on
a steady diet of Bow Wow Wow, Cindy Lauper and Thomas Dolby, they arrived in
fairly minimalist form, just three members, two key-tars and a drum machine,
pounding through some highlights from their previous albums, including
“Parlez Vous Freezepop?” and “Boys on Film”. The crowd, probably containing some of
the biggest Freezepop fans on the planet, was absolutely ballistic for the band,
who at several points during their set stated that it was the biggest crowd
they’d ever played to. There were a couple of hiccups, including some technical
difficulties during I’m Not Your Gameboy which resulted in some lyrics being
missed, but the audience was far too enthused to really give a crap, and
continued to sing along and cheer very loudly. The band even made an official
announcement for Rock Band during their set, announcing that their song “Brain
Power” would appear in the game right before launching into it themselves. As
the band got ready to close their set, they played their two most popular songs
(no doubt due to the runaway success of Guitar Hero), Ready 2 Rokk and Less Talk
more Rokk, but their closer was a cover version of Europe’s “Final Countdown”,
which the band stumbled through a bit, but got some needed assists from the
crowd. They’re set was great overall and a huge hit with the crowd, but one
unfortunate negative was that the band didn’t play “Jem”, which was truly
outrageous (sorry, I had to).
After Freezepop, the crowd shrank dramatically,
due to the sheer amount of people who came just to see them and the fact that it
was after one in the morning. However, the show went on, with the NESkimos
closing out the show. The prog-metal band was unfamiliar to me, but they played
through an interesting set with original songs with lyrics, instrumentals and a
few covers of video game songs. The crowd had chilled a bit unfortunately, and
seemed pretty low on energy at that point, something that seemed to affect the
band. However they pressed on, delivering a pretty nice set of metal. One thing
I found bizarre was the lack of a live drummer. The band had a DJ with a
computer controlling drum tracks among other electronic sounds. However, the
group worked with that dynamic fairly well.
The first concert of PAX was a great one, with
fantastic sets from Freezepop and Optimus Rhyme really bringing it to the
excited crowd. Here’s hoping that tomorrow night’s show will live up to the
debut.
