Mile High Music Festival 2009 Wrap-Up: Thievery Corporation

I quickly realized that Thievery Corporation was not as popular with the people at festival as I had imagined, despite their absolute legendary status among anyone I've ever talk to about them. I say this because I easily made my way up to the railing (while I had press, I didn't have photo pass [forgot, so sue me]), and no one made any sort of fuss. There was one die hard fan mentioning the songs he wanted TC to play, but really that was the only person talking about TC. I almost began to wonder if I had made some sort of mistake, if this was a different Thievery Corporation than the one I was thinking. Then the two master minds behind TC came out and spun a few minutes of a deep dub house track. The Festival crowd got up and paid attention, but the general response was still one of ambivalence. Then the band came out, seemingly lead by the most Jawesome of bass players, who would dance around and completely jive out to the funk driven track. This got people moving. Then the band was joined by this woman with a voice like what you would want your aunt to have so that you would have at least one freaking rad person in the family. She sang in metaphors with an enticing accent as images began to form and swirl on the gigantic LED screens behind the band and DJs. She left, and a new vocalist gained the stage, riling up the audience, much to the crowd's delight, and the images continued, but were joined by what looked like random clips of film stock. Then the new vocalist left, and was replaced by yet another vocalist. Now the images on the screen were almost exclusively what looked to be stock footage of a 1970's funk band practicing and performing mixed with video of tribal dancing. From that point on the vocalists would trade out randomly, adding in new ones occasionally, a few times a song or two would feature multiple singers. It was fun, but really if the music hadn't been funky and tribal and engaging, the whole experience would have been lost on me. Thankfully it was one of the most spirited and entertaining shows during the Festival. For what was essentially an extended DJ set with musicians and singers accompanying, the songs themselves were no longer than about 3 or 4 minutes long, giving the performance a streamlined feeling, which was nice because it didn't give me time to get bored with anything that may be been happening. I think I took more pictures during this performance than any other because of everything that was happening on stage. A very lively performance, one that no one ought to think about missing if they get the chance.

Thievery Corporation - Truth and Rights