Girl Talk/Harvard Yard

Honestly, I'm not even sure this could be considered a show as much as a frusturatingly badly planned cocktease.

To be honest, I don't consider mashup to be a legitimate genre of music. I mean, I get it, it's technically a different song when there are different beats added into the background and it is mixed together in weird ways, but as a whole I don't dig the genre. Nonetheless, I had been listening to Girl Talk the entire week in order to hype myself up for this show, and I do have to say, Girl Talk's combonations of bad rap were quite acoustically pleasing as well as irresistable to dance to, so this show should have been awesome.

I arrive at the tail end of the pep rally that preceeded this (this show was free for Harvard students, it was a part of the Harvard/Yale football game, an event that basically constitutes waking up earlier than class to go drink alcohol, pretending to care about a sport you can't even begin to understand, and shitting on a school you also probably applied to.). It was maybe zero degrees out, so my outfit which consisted of two sweatshirts, a heavey jacket, and a wool scarf did not scream 'oh hey i'm at a concert that i'm going to be reallly sweaty and dance at". I'm one of those obnoxious bitches who thinks that there is a legitimate differnece between standing 20 feet away from the stage and being right there, so I pushed through the crowd to make it to the front,

Man oh man it was packed. It was the type of show where I'm pretty sure my feet weren't touching the ground. I dropped my cellphone at one point and had to bend down to get it, and honest to god that is how people die at these things. Naturally the show started a little late, but whatever no big deal.

The issue with what should have otherwise been an epic show was a combonation of Girl Talk's idealistic standards of "no barriers seperating him from the audience" in his contract, and the Harvard college event board's poor interpretation of this statement. The stage was a flimsy, temporary thing which apparently needed work done on it either than the show.

Unfortunately, the CEB failed to predict that a concert would break out at this event, and that perhaps the combined pressure of thousands of kids trying to get to the front of the stage would put unsafe pressure on the stage and cause it to shake, which was apparently unsafe.

Girl Talk played for maybe a total of 10 minutes, and those were an epic 10 minutes. The crowd was way into it, and it was so crowded that I did that thing where I didn't even move and ended up dancing just because it was unavoidable with the compression of the crowd. That thing also happend where one obnoxious jerk leaned to the side and subsequently the entire crowd ended up inadvertently swaying back and forth (with some people falling over).

About 10 minutes in, the police stopped the show because all the people touching the stage was making it unsafe, and apparently a girl had gotten caught under the stage. The police and the CEB people calmly (and completely seoriusly) told the crowd of over 1000 Girl Talk fans to take "10 steps back". Hilarity (and non-compliance) ensued.

It also did not help that Girl Talk said that he "loved crowds", which caused an additional crowd of people to surge to the front, completely destroying any efforts the police and CEB had made in getting the crowd to "take 10 steps back". Eventually, Girl Talk set up in front of the stage, and started playing again, at around 10:50 pM (and after a 40 minute interlude) for perhaps another 5 epic minutes until he was once again stopped by the police and the crowd was once again told to "step the fuck back".

Unfortunately, all events in Harvard Yard must end by 11:00, so there was no use in getting the crowd to back up and so the show pretty much ended there, after a shit ton of standing around and "backing up" we got to hear Girl Talk play for maybe 15 minutes. On top of it all, my scarf got lost in the crowd (although I did later enocounter it, stampeded into a dirt pile with 9824783 leaves). I've never been so frusturated with a venue's incompetence. If it was in Girl Talk's contract to not have a barrier seperating the crowd from teh stage (whcih I find rather idealistic, tbh), then why did Harvard not host him on a real stage, not a flimsy temporary thing? Or inside? Or at Tercentary theater, where Al Gore spoke to a crowd maybe 10 times the size and everything was handled calmly and logically?

At least Girl Talk isn't a sucker for Harvard elitism. 2 of the finals clubs offered to have him play, and he refused to endorse the nation's most exclusive and elitist institutions. (Although to be fair, one of these clubs offered to open the doors to everyone if Girl Talk would play there). All in all, it was maybe the worst concert ever.