Concert Review: MC Frontalot with MC Lars and YTCracker

A couple weeks ago, I went to see MC Frontalot, with MC Lars and YTCracker, with my friend JD. This should have been an incredibly fun show, and parts of it were, but poor planning on everybody's part made the overall night kind of a bummer.

Poor planning on the booking agents' front:
MC Frontalot has a documentary called Nerdcore Rising that they're showing in cities on the same nights as the tour; the idea is that you're supposed to be able to attend the movie and then go to the show. However, they put the Atlanta movie in Midtown and the concert in Marietta, more than thirty minutes' drive away. JD and I watched the film, then dashed to the car and sped up to Marietta, arriving just minutes before MC Lars and YTCracker started. We missed the first three bands entirely. And the movie theater? Had maybe fifteen people there, all of whom did exactly what we did.

Poor planning on the performers' front:
MC Lars and YTCracker performed as openers for MC Frontalot. However, their set went on for well over an hour, nearly an hour and a half. They demanded a lot from the audience physically--nearly every song had some variation on put-your-arms-in-the-air or everybody-jump or call-and-response, and by the time their set was finished, the audience was visibly exhausted--and didn't really have the energy to respond to headliner MC Frontalot.

Poor planning on the venue's front:
Nobody told the performers that there was a midnight curfew. MC Frontalot, the obvious main draw, didn't take the stage until nearly 11:30. He did literally three songs and was just warming up when the venue managers told him he had fifteen minutes left. True to their word, four songs later they chased him off the stage. Laaaame. I can't recommend the venue, Swayze's: not serving any beverages, let alone alcohol, is kind of whack, but it's an all-ages rock venue in the suburbs, so I can forgive it that--it's trying to do something that most people aren't willing to try to do. However, not warning the performers of a midnight curfew and allowing the headliner to take the stage with only a half hour to perform? Is entirely inexcusable. That was a major fuck-up.

All this said, I really enjoyed MC Frontalot himself. In the movie Nerdcore Rising, there was a section about the appropriation of black culture by white people, and it would be impossible--nay, silly--to deny that this is what's going on in certain facets of nerdcore music. However, I think it's certainly possible for a white dude to rap without being a parody of rap, and that's what MC Frontalot does--in his own styled fashion, with his own vernacular, with his own choice of instruments and samples. When I watch MC Frontalot, I don't feel like I'm watching Weird Al Yankovic send up Jay-Z. Furthermore, MC Frontalot's music is, on the whole, pretty cheerful; he raps about the delights of being a gamer and a geek, and he leaves the bitter-nerd out of it. MC Frontalot has a great stage presence (although I wish he'd lose the headband-light) and a great voice, and to his credit, he was utterly gracious about the curfew screw-up.

YTCracker, on the other hand, came across as a hateful asshole. I was wholly unimpressed with his sweatpants-and-obviously-no-underwear ensemble (eww) and his stage-swagger and vocal cadence, which did feel like a parody of mainstream rap, and an unkind one at that. He and MC Lars performed several fun songs, but their set was overshadowed for me by their bitter us-versus-them songs about other subcultures. "Signing Emo," "Hipster Girl," and "Generic Crunk Rap" each left me rolling my eyes; making fun of pop subcultures is rarely funny to me, both because it's overdone and it feels like shooting fish in a barrel, and their not-particularly-original send-ups felt jeering and bitter rather than teasing from one dumb-in-the-eyes-of-others subculture to another.

(Technically, these are all MC Lars's songs, although the two were splitting frontman duties for the evening. However, MC Lars reminded me too much of Jason Segel to allow other opinions to form; I spent the set pretending it was Marshall from "How I Met Your Mother" on-stage rapping like a dork, and it delighted me.)

So. I'd go see MC Frontalot again, but only if YTCracker isn't on the ticket as well. I've heard that his shows at more conventional, non-all-ages venues have gone better; I didn't make it to his sold-out show at the Drunken Unicorn last time he was in Atlanta, but next time he comes through I'll definitely see about going again. I'd love to see him in a better venue and under better conditions; he's a performer that deserves it.