RECAP!!! Cozza Frenzy Tour Part 2
Time for another RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRREECAP!!!!
After the first leg of the Cozza Frenzy tour, i left miami with a sore throat. We had just slammed through a crushing route of dates, each night bursting with energy, and mounting intensity. But quite literally, the second i walked into my home late sunday night (my flights delayed, my bags lost) i collapsed into my bed, and was literally on-and-off ill the entire time i was home. I had anticipated 10 days of non-stop studio time but instead my body forced me to slow down as best it could.
I did manage to create several hours of new loops and content for live shows, as well as a long overdue ‘metal-mashup’ set for a last-minute booking opening for Korn in Southern California. And that was how the second leg kicked off:
October 30: Trevor and i flew down to Orange County to slay an odd-ball crowd of metal heads, hybrid SoCal gangster thugs, youngster mods and face-painted goons, lots of headbangers and overall wierdos as well as shirtless jocks, and girls who *LOVE* eye shadow. I was excited. It turned out to be slightly lame because there was a massive hole in the audience where the promoters thought it would be cool to reserve PREMIUM dancefloor space for ‘VIP’ guests, but they failed to sell any of those passes, so half the front area was completely empty, while 2-3000 people packed in all around it. I played my heart out, highlight being a Sepultura mashup i’ve been wanting to drop for years. Then i slammed a fuckload of wine and rushed off to the hotel to knockout quick. Our biggest show of the tour was next:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgrj1OI8Cro[/youtube]
October 31: Halloween in Denver. The largest venue i have ever played a headlining show at, not to mention it sold out 3500 tickets weeks in advance (THANK YOU COLORADO!!!), and there was an extra thousand-person afterparty also sold out. I am not sitting around bragging… i am like GAWKING from the sidelines in total shock… what kind of WEIRD world have i fallen backwards into…it’s out of control, immensely beautiful, but exponentially stranger and stranger. HDC and RJD2 played support, and The Fillmore exploded like a fucking thunder-bomb. The afterparty was good too, but i was a sweaty mess by the end, and after 3 loco shows in 24 hours i was ready to collapse.
November 3: Sold Out 900+ people in Grand Rapids Michigan? On a Tuesday? WTF??? How does a tuesday night feel SO FORKING LOCO!?!?!? The crowd was amazing. my buddy had forwarded me some online goofball haters talking shit about Bassnectar in michigan, so i didn’t know what to expect. I put together a sketch set which was a mix of classics, new insane bangers, and some truly weird shit. At the end of the show, i literally wanted to hug every single person in that room. It was a totally wonderful energy rush. Angela took video of 2 dudes outside talking about some funnny stuffff!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6GdEJQUpAg[/youtube]
November 4: Wednesday in Madison: rammed over capacity @ the Majestic… the venue shoots up vertically maybe 2 or 3 stories high with vaulted seats. It was our first night with Nosaj Thing (on the road for the next 3 weeks) doing support, and his music was the perfect set-up: rich, emotive, thick, strange, and full of infectious groove. When i finished i clambered up to the backstage and it was full of random kids who had broken in and were hiding up there… i shudder to think what they might have been doing, hopefully they had fun. Overall the Wisco crowd was amazing!
November 5: my first time playing in Bloomington…i expected maybe 100 people. Although the venue claimed to fit 800 people, our 500+ crowd was more than i could imagine squeezing into that room. When i walked into the back of the room at the end of Nosaj’s set i was immediately drenched in moisture…the air was dense with perspiration. I got to dig into lots of oldies and classics since it was a new place, but i literally recognized DOZENS of faces, so either those locals get around or those locos travelled a long way to Bloomington…either way it was a facemelter.
At the end i dove into the crowd to take a ‘family photo’ and when i climbed back onstage i sliced my pointer finger on broken glass and bled everywhere while i played an encore track and tried to stop the bleeding. Backstage Elliott laughed at me when we saw the cut: half an inch long and i looked like a sissy. and i AM a sissy. but it was deep and bled for days. As i type this i am happy to note it has healed and once again i just think it is so magical that our bodies heal themselves like this. there were all these girls backstage, and elliott brought back pizza, the girls were hanging with me and the crew but one of them was texting her boyfriend, and i guess ALL their boyfriends were outside in the car, and i flipped out. i was like “im not some backstage DJ schmuck!!!! tell your boyfriends to get their asses in here, its warm and we have pizza!” The guys were totally cool, and it turns out one of them was like the Bassnectar Pied Piper who was responsible for getting them all to come out to the Bloomington show. I was thrilled to meet him and give him a hi-5 with my working hand. It’s always like that, people ask for a picture, then the girls jump in and all their Dude buddies slink back and im like “get in tha fuckin picture! this isnt just for girls” maybe they just dont wana be photographed with some weirdo like me. hahahaa. that would probably be a good initial instinct. anyhow, where was i?
November 6: After Lollapalooza we kind of knew Chicago would sell out, but i had no idea that The House Of Blues was such a magnificent temple of mad-house art and architecture and overall a TOTALLY bizzarre and gorgeous venue. The crowd was *TOTALLY* bezerk, and the set was over in a single flash…2.5 hours of my life gone in an instant, felt sooo good and i was so excited i could barely sleep that night after playing. During sound check i asked the house light designer what he thought i should play in such a gorgeous, epic venue. He said something simple that blew my mind. something to the effect of “at the end of the day, these kids are coming here to PARTY. All i’ve heard about Bassnectar is your shows are off the hook and i think your fans are just coming to spend time together going wild” it was so simple, but beautiful. And i looked at our huge custom PK sound system lined up along the front of the stage, and i felt so excited and honored…teeming with anticipation to broadcast this mad-heavy bass music the way it was intended to be heard: FULL THROTTLE WITH MASSIVE LOW END! i felt more inspired than ever to just let myself explode and become one with the entire crowd because they mean so much to me.
November 7: Detroit. Every inch of that venue was soaked in sweat…We put loads of effort (thanks to Lia, Daysha, Angela, Justin, Ryan, and so many more) into hosting 4 community orgs to support and promote at the event, and everything about that just made the night feel extra special. Sweat was dripping on my head from the ceiling when i played my first song. After the show i split outside, ran down an alley and was trying to get to the bus but got mauled in the street by this fucking crazy gob of people. There was a massive make-shift streetparty/carshow thing happening as multiple venues emptied out onto the same street. It was awesome. We had raised over a thousand dollars for local Detroit community organizations, and overall it was a perfect close-out to 5 cities in a row.
November 10: Our third round at Boston’s Paradise club, and without question my favorite. It just gets better and better. I admit here that i lied outside on the street and told security that multiple people were “my brother” to try and get them in. When i’m outside a venue before a sold out show and someone comes up to me on the street and begging for help to get in, i cannot say no. After they stopped letting me pull moves like that, i went outside to try and pass out stickers to the other folks who couldn’t get tickets, but felt like kind of a cheapskate “hey sorry you can’t get into the show, here is a little freakin sticker” …i dont know. i meant well. At one point in the show the bouncers started kicking people out for crowd surfing. I signaled Elliott over and unfairly yelled at him to make that stop, but then one kid came crashing into my table and Elliott gave me an “i told you so” look so i shut up. haha! That Missy Elliott beat into the Lil Viscious beatbox mashup went off so hard, i decided i would play it at every show for the rest of the tour.
November 12: 2 years prior i had played the legendary 930 club in DC by opening for STS9… i remembered literally gaping at how big the venue was back then and literally wondering if i would ever play a venue like that on my own. The show was EPIC! Utterly sold out, and like in Detroit, i gave a dollar for every ticket sold to help 1 of 2 local groups Hip Hop Education and Urban Artistry, and in between Rex Riddim and Nosaj Thing, Urban Artistry cleared out a circle in the middle of the packed floor and these kids did banging dance moves while other kids from Hip Hop Education stood up bravely on stage rapping away. A lot of these kids were 5, 6, 7 years old. it was SO PRECIOUS!!!!! That one kid rapping about brushing his teef “Just HUSH! and listen to the sound of my BRUSH! SHH SHH SHH SHHHHH SH SH SHH SH SHSHHHHHH” it was HOT! he was like 3 feet tall!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wX9icwlcOY[/youtube]
November 13: NYC…yes, friday the 13th. I am tempted to mention how lame i think it is to take nitrous…what a horrendously pointless and dumb waste of the precious brain and body. But i *honestly* don’t mean that as a personal judgment, i more mean that as a heartfelt ‘heads up’ …i’ve seen a lot of people get really effed up from that. So be careful out there. Other than that weird scene outside, *INSIDE* the event was a throbbing, bursting freakshow. i played my heart out, the whole crew went bananas. We had a full day of interviews and press and stuff, and there was a journalist who flew over from the UK to cover the show. this was pretty strange for me, so i just kind of kept my eyes closed most of the time and made weird noises in my head while i played my favorite songs. There were some really weird and random combinations that happened live on the spot which was super exciting. My little sister was in the house, and bunch of friends who flew out from Cali, got *WAY* too drunk, and it caused me to bar them from the bar the next night in…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b58V6L_qUG0[/youtube]
November 14: Philly
We played this same venue last year, and while it felt great and was full of people, this time there were literally twice as many people. I tried starting off TOTALLY differently than i have all fall, and it was weird. The crowd was looking ecstatic and making tons of noise but the whole front row was just STANDING THERE, still as hell. I played ready2rage and they went monkeyshit, so i guess that answered my internal question of what do they want? they want loco wobblestep. ok! 🙂 These 3 nights were *SO* indecently hot, like nasty nasty hot, but Philly was the most absurd. The good folks at the venue said their AC had broken that night, but i feel there was a greater conspiracy going on behind the scenes, designed to make me sweat myself to death or something…but the crazier it got, the more amped up i felt, and as i was losing my voice and my mind at the same time i decided to just totally let go…it was the last night till Mississippi next week, and our last east coast show, so why not go totally BUCKFUCKINGWILD!!!!
ha!
Much love to the east coast, the midwest, and our friends in colorado.
i feel an amazing community building up and i just LOVE IT.
overall i just feel overflowing with an insane amount of gratitude…literally impossible to express, totally beyond words. which doesn’t really explain why i just typed so many in an effort to simply say:
thank you ALL!
-Lorin