Show Review: Gaslamp Killer @ Kava Lounge for Critical Beatdown 3-3-2011
The Motherfucking Gaslamp Killer takes his name from his earlier days when he would DJ in San Diego’s douchebag hotbed known as The Gaslamp District. Far from being a lasting token of hometown pride, the “Killer” part actually referred to his ability to clear dance floors, leaving Gaslamp clubs essentially dead. It’s a quality that he seems to relish. Crowds hated him and he hated them right back.
Seeing Gaslamp Killer return to SD for a not-so-secret secret show at Kava Lounge then turns into this weird guessing game. How many of these douchebags in tonight’s sardine-packed crowd would’ve been the same jerk-offs that scoffed at GLK just a few years prior? How many of them actually enjoy the music and how many of them just want to look cool in Justin Timberlake hats at what is most decidedly the trendiest scene in town that night?
It’s hard to tell whether this irony dawns on GLK. But if it does, it gives him that much more power which he is more than happy to flex. After a somewhat limp set from Illuminauts (one mysteriously lacking in low end for a night designed to mimic LA’s Low End Theory), an intensely murderous, loosely-arranged barrage of noise from Skrapez, and DJ Pound’s apocalyptic cyborg funk in-between, GLK takes the stage. GLK’s set is a test of might. Between Charlie Sheen interview snippets, ’60s pop rock, Vietnamese folk singing, Busta Rhymes, and Smokey Robinson–all glitched out and mixed in with his own schizoid-psychedelic Brainfeeder concoctions–GLK seems eager to discover just how far out he could go before he loses the audience. And it turns out that the further out he goes, the more willing the audience is to follow him. In the middle of the second encore, amid an orgy of thumping machine blasts and lasers, GLK pauses the beat. “If San Diego hadn’t fucked me so hard, I wouldn’t be able to fuck the world so well.” As he cackles maniacally, he surrenders us over to the machines again. And we dance.
