e venue was a no name ballroom in a strip mall off  yards away from an interstate, sharing the location with a Nigerian yoga studio for the homeless, an insurance office, and a storefront church.   The Instagram flier just gave an address and the hours 8:00 – 12:00.  I let my son know that the headliners would not go on until 10 at earliest, but he insisted we stand in line at 8:00.  We got a brief frisk by some off-duty cops, my son bought a t-shirt from the sole harried youth who slowly pawed through a pile of unsorted merch examining each tag for the size.  The local supporting acts ran until about 11:15.  The crowd was predominately male and young (it was an all ages show) but about evenly split between black, white, and hispanic.

The sound really sucked, which was good for me since I forgot my earplugs.  Around 100 youths bounced around to DJ sets, but not DJs like my old self understands them. One person played a track on a laptop, the DJ sang along to the track and tried to entertain the crowd, with pleas to “Open that shit up” to facilitate moshing.  When a track was over there was dead silence, no transitions, very unlike a dance DJ.   It was hard for me to tell what was going one, since there were about a dozen other people on stage other than the performers. They weren’t really engaged with the music, but were mostly taking pictures with their phones for shining flashlight on each other.  During a brief break I asked my son why no one yelled or clapped after a track ended.  He said it was because the DJ sucked.  One rapper with green hair was the exception – he was good – I wish there were only about a dozen more of him.

Nettspend finally took the stage.  For a reason a wasn’t able to fully understand, Nettspend is the most hated rapper on Twitter.  I guess he’s 18, but he looked closer to 12, a  babyfaced blonde white guy in a red hoodie.  He tried to do his thing, but the sound sucked, and the microphone sucked, and the computer glitched, and roughly half the audience were spewing hate his way.  After a short set and some odd on stage heart-to-heart with DJ Phatt, he wandered off stage, hoodie pulled over his head.  

Osamason (who I accidentally called Obamason a number of times) marched on the stage and took charge.  The crowd loved it.  They opened that shit up, and Osamason whipped the crowd into a moshing fury.   Then it turned midnight- and all the lights went up, power was cut to the sound system, and the security guards started hustling people out the back door.  

Maybe because it was mostly a young crowd, the vibe was pretty chill.  I was easily three times the age of the audience, but was left alone to chill in the back.  Only one sharply dressed man who identified himself as “artists management” came to talk to me, and that was because he thought I owned the venue.  

I’m not plugged in to the social network that my son is, so I don’t know how the show was received by the fans. I did see a fan recording of the show on Youtube with comments to the effect the show was “shut down.” The timing of the shut. down at midnight lead me to believe the real enemy of fun is strictly enforced zoning standards.

Also, the Canvas Hotel was a friendly, comfortable place to stay, and the Opening Bell Coffee Shop had some of the tastiest kolaches I’ve had since the Kolache Shop shut down.