The Campus Activities Board has secured the group Super Mash Bros. to perform for Dandelion Day this year. Courtesy of www. a2.l3-images.myspacecdn.com
The line up for this year’s Dandelion Day performance includes MGMT, Daft Punk, 50 Cent, Modest Mouse, Limp Bizkit and Lil’ Wayne. Well, sort of.
The actual performer for the Saturday, April 23 D-Day celebration is Super Mash Bros., a mash-up trio hailing from California.
“We have heard a fair amount about Super Mash Bros., specifically outside the context of Dandelion Day, and people seem to like their music,” junior, Campus Activities Board Chair and SA president elect Bradley Halpern, said. “More than anything, students seem to respond well to songs that they know.”
The group, which consists of Nicolas Fenmore, Ethan Dawes and Dick Fink, exclusively performs mash-ups of music from other artists — songs cosisting entirely of bits and pieces from other songs, usually pop songs that will be instantly recognizable to listeners. For example, the Super Mash Bros. song “I Fucking Bleed Purple and Gold” — one of their most popular songs on YouTube — kicks off with Eminem’s rap verses from “Cleanin’ Out My Closet” laid over the beat from MGMT’s “Kids,” and then transitions into the signature beat from Draft Punk’s “One More Time,” accompanying Missy Elliott’s singing from “Lose Control.”
“I think students will enjoy being able to connect with the melodies behind Super Mash Bros. mash-ups, even without previously being familiar with the artist,” Halpern said.
While he admits that the availability of performers was “more spotty than usual” for this year’s concert due to the holiday weekend, and that “people may not be quite as enthused” about the announcement as they
were for last year’s band, OK Go, Halpern says that “come Saturday, I think [students are] going to have a great day.”
The choice of a non-live performance group strays from the norm for a D-Day performance, and, as such, students’ expectations are mixed.
“It’s like you’re just listening to music really loud, as opposed to seeing someone actually play something,” sophomore Emmett Wyman said.
“For too long, the college music scene has been dominated by musicians,” sophomore Tom Krasner sarcastically said, adding that he thought the group was a “brilliant choice.” “Even as I was watching OK Go last year, I was thinking to myself that they were spending too much time playing their own songs. Also, it was distracting when they were playing their instruments and moving around. Call me old fashioned, but music should be played perfectly still while staring at a laptop. [This concert] will rival the sheer energy and heart-racing excitement that comes with pressing the play button on Youtube.”
Other students feel that Super Mash Bros. is a fitting representation of today’s new musical styles, the eclectic tastes of college students and the overall D-Day experience.
Sophmore Andrew Quick said the band “fits the general vibe of the day, since it’s party music and D-Day just becomes one giant party anyway.”
Senior Michael Ryave, while noting that he doesn’t “fully endorse this artist for the whole school,” said that they are “a step in the right direction, in respect to what most of our generation expects at an outdoor blowout concert.”
“Live bands have consistently had too limited a scope of fans,” Ryave added, “so mash-ups might be the best idea for a campus-wide celebration.”
Super Mash Bros.’ concert will begin at 2:00 p.m. Saturday on the Wilson Quadrangle. This year’s D-Day celebration will also include activities such as photobooths, spin art shutter shades, spray tattoos and more. In the case of rain, which is forecasted for Saturday, activities will be moved into Douglass Dining Hall, where the concert would commence on a soundstage.
T-shirts for D-Day will be available in very limited edition at the Common Market for $5. Students are, of course, urged to be responsible throughout the day and carry their UR student ID cards with them during the festivities.
Silverstein is a member of
the class of 2013.
