Never gonna stop

I don't want to blow my wad in the first day, but I've got another nugget for you all. To set the stage, I went to see Vampire Weekend at the Metro in Chicago this past Sunday with Otter, Toners, Bruges and a handful of others. If you follow music criticism online, you know VW went through about four degrees of backlash after the obscene amount of hype they received for months before their full-length debut. It was a great show and everyone had a lot of fun. Anyways, the opener was a guy known as Yacht (real name: Jona Bechtolt). His performance also featured his girlfriend, Claire L. Evans. She even gave me a hug, which Jona seemed perturbed by. Oh well.

The show was fun, but not exactly my thing. It was very entertaining and a great warm-up, though I'd probably never listen to them at home, and I would've liked more dancing. Nevertheless, I was searching around the tubes today looking to see what they're about. I have to say this is quite the dynamic duo. Jona is responsible for the pop-culture creations AirMail and (along with Claire) Flickrblockrs and cofounded the blogging community Urban Honking, which features around fifty Portland, OR bloggers including Jona and Claire.

Now to get to the point.

After all this great stuff I read about both of these people, largely extending beyond the musical realm, I came across this post (click for free music) on Brooklyn Vegan which featured unprovoked comments that unabashedly ripped on Jona. I was particularly surprised by the guy who hated on the Q&A session at the show. I thought it was a fun way to bring some approachability to normally distant electronic artists. After flailing around on stage in a very entertaining way, the duo took some time to acknowledge the crowd and try to get them into the show. They were just trying to make people have FUN. Why all the hatred? (Full disclosure: The Q&A session was how I got my hug, so I might be biased).

When you're at a show, why not enjoy the music? (And dance more, you vapid hipsters.)