For those of you who don't know him, George Watsky (known just as Watsky) is a rapper and spoken word poet from San Francisco, California. He just released an album, Cardboard Castles and is currently touring all across the country in support of it. The album, while not the greatest rap album I've ever heard (History Will Absolve Me has a pretty strong hold on that claim), is a very high quality album. It's catchy, with pretty solid production and a lot of incredible singles. What's most interesting about this album, and Watsky in general, is his ability to flip from deadly serious and deeply emotional to silly and borderline immature. But I digress.
I went with a friend of mine from school, as well as a kid I met through theater who's in college and one of his friends. As we walked into the Paradise Rock Club, the first opener had already started. We walked over to the merchandise booth, bought what we wanted and started paying attention to the music.
The concert opened with a DJ whose name I can't recall playing a set. It was okay, too brostep-y for my tastes but not terrible. After that, a neat hip-hop/ska band called I believe was name B-Kat played after, and got the crowd going a little bit more. They were a tad generic, but I'm an absolute sucker for horns and enjoyed their brief set. After that, Danny McClain sang a couple of covers in his heavenly voice with Pat Demetri (Watsky's guitarist) and Watsky's pianist whose name I didn't catch. After that, Dumbfoundead, who has been opening for Watsky on the whole tour, came on. The same DJ from before was producing for him, and I dug some of the stuff they were playing. He didn't entirely enthrall me, but tracks like Ghengis Khan were pretty mosh-ready. Nothing too profound seemed to come from him, but some of his tracks were pretty dope. Then Watsky came on.
While I can't remember for the life of me his entire hour and a half set, several moments really stuck out to me. The first was somewhere from halfway to three quarters of the way through the concert, when he went from Glowing Screens pt. 1, a catchy, hopeful tune into Tiny Glowing Screens pt. 2, a desperate, emotional spoken word poem and then right into Wounded Healer (Deer Tick Sample), an emotional song anchored by a really nice guitar part. These three songs right in a row was just such an emotional punch in the gut, in all of the best ways. What I love about relatively underground artists like Watsky is that you can feel and see the passion and emotion he empties into every word of these songs. He writes all his own song, and you can tell that he poured his heart out into these tracks. It was enthralling.
While I can't remember for the life of me his entire hour and a half set, several moments really stuck out to me. The first was somewhere from halfway to three quarters of the way through the concert, when he went from Glowing Screens pt. 1, a catchy, hopeful tune into Tiny Glowing Screens pt. 2, a desperate, emotional spoken word poem and then right into Wounded Healer (Deer Tick Sample), an emotional song anchored by a really nice guitar part. These three songs right in a row was just such an emotional punch in the gut, in all of the best ways. What I love about relatively underground artists like Watsky is that you can feel and see the passion and emotion he empties into every word of these songs. He writes all his own song, and you can tell that he poured his heart out into these tracks. It was enthralling.
The next moment that stuck out to me was his last song of the night, right before the encore. Watsky announced that because of the ordinance laws in Boston, they had to close down for the night and walked off stage. After a second of silence, he stormed back on, declared "But I forgot, f*ck the popo and give no f*cks" and launched right into the song IDGAF. Now, that might sound juvenile, and it totally is, but to a mostly young and countercultural audience (myself included), it was really powerful. What helped is that the song itself was one of the most pumped of the night, ending with Watsky crowd-surfing across the floor to the balcony, climbing up to the balcony and finishing the song then literally walking across the crowd back to the stage. It was absolutely nuts, and it was about to get a lot better.
The final part that struck me was the almost 10-minute long encore. After finishing IDGAF, Watsky kind of pulled the same trick he did before again, but was much less extreme about it. They started into the encore, which was just song after song after song. He has a lot of shorter tunes that he threw in here, as well as samples from longer ones. The whole band and Watsky barely paused for a breath as they barreled through all of the tracks, constantly building the whole time. Watsky started inviting people up on stage with him and the whole crowd was just totally bonkers. While I used to hate large crowds because I always felt my individuality was lost in them, here I allowed myself to completely meld into the screaming, jumping, dancing crowd. I was completely lost in the moment and it felt amazing.
I also got an incredibly dope t-shirt, so I'd call it ultimately an amazing night.
The final part that struck me was the almost 10-minute long encore. After finishing IDGAF, Watsky kind of pulled the same trick he did before again, but was much less extreme about it. They started into the encore, which was just song after song after song. He has a lot of shorter tunes that he threw in here, as well as samples from longer ones. The whole band and Watsky barely paused for a breath as they barreled through all of the tracks, constantly building the whole time. Watsky started inviting people up on stage with him and the whole crowd was just totally bonkers. While I used to hate large crowds because I always felt my individuality was lost in them, here I allowed myself to completely meld into the screaming, jumping, dancing crowd. I was completely lost in the moment and it felt amazing.
I also got an incredibly dope t-shirt, so I'd call it ultimately an amazing night.
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