Matt & Kim reel in MTV award and roll out the party
Perhaps it was the overflow of excitement from learning minutes before taking the stage that they won the 2009 MTV Video Music Award for Breakthrough Video, but one would be hard pressed to wipe the hyperactive, mile-long smiles of off Matt and Kim's faces any night of the week.
Needless to say, electro-pop duo Matt and Kim's free show at Parkland College turned up the already-on-eleven spastic excitement of their live performances one louder.
After a nefarious opening from Chicago MC's Yea Big & Kid Static, whose high-brow brand of Midwestern rap features such classy refrains as "Bitch, eat yo sandwich," the 200+ people in the crowd had no trouble getting into the jump-around mood for the evening. With songs about video games and novelty name-dropping, Yea Big & Kid Static will forever be trapped in the abominable nerd-rap category, which is hardly a respectable category more akin to bad sketch comedy.
But kudos to Yea Big & Kid Static for effectively (but perhaps only technically or logistically) remixing Roy Orbison's "Crying" with Missy Misdemeanor Elliot's "Get Ur Freak On" during their opening stretch. The next 45 minutes were entirely downhill musically, though the energy of the crowd would certainly argue otherwise.
When Matt and Kim took the stage shortly after 8 p.m., the vibe stayed strong while representing Brooklyn to the max by dropping Notorious B.I.G.'s "Where Brooklyn At" and the infallible ODB's "Shimmy Shimmy Ya" throughout the set.
After announcing to the crowd their recent Video Music Award win, they promised to a delighted audience that they would play until the plug got pulled. So for the majority of the next hour, drummer Kim Schifino grinned ear-to-ear as Matt Johnson's hundreds of fist pumps were met two-fold by hundreds more in the audience.
They played through the requisite hits including "Daylight," "Good Ol' Fashion Nightmare," and "Lessons Learned," for which they received the Breakthrough Video Award, all the while the audience of teens and pre-teens singing at the top of their lungs. The icing on the cake, it seemed, was the inclusion of synth novelty songs like Gary Glitter's "Rock and Roll Part 2" and Europe's "Final Countdown," which in many ways epitomized their rise to fame via social networking tools like YouTube and Twitter for internet lackeys with attention-deficit disorders that think an MTV Award is the holy grail of musicianship.
Matt and Kim are definitely onto something, though, as evidenced through their MTV presence. Comparisons to the White Stripes, sexually and musically, are unavoidable, but that is where Matt and Kim depart from the duo formula. Where the White Stripes look backwards into classic rock, and where duos like Death From Above 1979 work inwards, Matt and Kim look entirely forward combining dance pop elements with a certain kind of Carpenters annoyance.
A lot can be said of the two people, but you can't say they aren't a party, albeit a high school party. As they closed out the show, they urged fans to contact them via Twitter for post-show award celebrations. As of midnight, they received invitations to house parties, to smoke blunts and to gorge on half-price appetizers at Applebee's.
Let's hope they're still reeling from the celebration.
5 comments
this was a great show. i feel bad for the kid that got dropped on his head and had to get taken off in a stretcher, though
someone who was there
I’m not sure what show the writer was at, but it sounds like he didn’t have any fun. He also can’t count very well. There were at least 500-600 people. It was a great night. It was also a free night, unlike the upcoming pygmalion festival.
Nice burn there —
Ready for it? Good.
FREE SHOWS AT PYGMALION FOR EVERYONE TO ENJOY:
THURSDAY
Blues:
11:45 AM — Liesel Booth
12:30 PM — Pamela Machala
Sandella’s:
12:45 PM — Tracey and Tricia
1:30 PM — Stanton McConnell
2:15 PM — Cara Maurizi
Krannert Art Museum:
6:40 PM — Liz Janes
7:20 PM — Brooke Wagonner
8:00 PM — Denison Witmer
8:45 PM — My Brightest Diamond
9:45 PM — William Fitzsimmons
10:45 PM — Bob Nanna
FRIDAY
Blues:
11:30 AM — Girls Next Door
12:00 PM — Ryan Groff
12:45 PM — William Fitzsimmons
Sandella’s:
12:45 PM — Final Pygmalion Effect
1:30 PM — Matt Wagemann
2:15 PM — Kilroy et al
SATURDAY:
Parasol Records:
12:00 PM — Tim Stephens
12:40 PM — Morgan Orion and The Constellations
1:10 PM — Cameron McGill and What Army
1:40 PM — Peninsula
2:10 PM — Boston Fleener (of The Jips)
2:40 PM — Drew Danburry (acoustic)
3:10 PM — You and Yourn
3:40 PM — New Ruins (acoustic)
4:40 PM — The Horse’s Ha (acoustic)
Exile on Main St.:
1:30 PM — Elsinore
2:30 PM — Zach May and The Maps
3:30 PM — Santa
4:30 PM — The Curses
Krannert Center:
10:00 PM — Princeton
11:00 PM — Ra Ra Riot
Ummmmm… so, yeah…. enjoy.
Josh
What’s with all the Yea Big and Kid Static hate? They were pretty good!
Do you want to know why “the energy of the crowd would certainly argue otherwise?“ It’s because they are a talented duo and know how to hype up a crowd.
And it was “Eat yo sandwich,“ not “Bitch, eat yo sandwich.“ Way to typecast hip-hop with swearing.
Not important
While the show was amazing did no one care about the lack of event staff. It was horrible. I watched that kid fall on his lower back and it turns out he broke a vertabrate. Music was top notch but the event as a whole was ran like a whore house on a sunday. oh and that second person who posted I don’t think you were at the same show as me because there was about 200 people there no nearly 500.
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