Yves Larock live at Hardrock Cafe, Mumbai

It’s been a trend I suppose, to get the best EDM talent out there to India, and gross out-market every other big EDM talent, in a sort of stupid struggle to outmuscle each other at event management.

What happens out of these khichdi-wars is a lot of hoopla, marketing gimmickry and one-hit-wonder-gigs than make you wonder, is this really doing anything to support or spread of the gospel of dance music, or is it a run-of-the-mill quick-buck-fix that a lot of events companies try to bank on.

I guess it’s the latter.

In comes Yves Larock (Yves Cheminade from his woefully hollow Wikipedia entry), a man who’s name most people can’t pronounce, but who almost every Savita, Abhijeet and Pakiya know about. However, if you ask any of these guys what’s he famous for—they’ll have a straightforward answer.

My dream is to fly,

Over the rainbow,

So high!

Rise up!!!

Yep, that’s about it, nobody really knows where he’s from, what other songs does he produce, or why the hell they only know one song, and not others.

There’s a simple reason, Yves Larock is what we may call a one hit wonder, apart from Rise Up which climbed to #13 on the UK Charts and been a crazy hit in clubs worldwide, his CV has very little to show for, not many massive gigs, and even fewer genuine hit singles.

But, he has Rise Up! And so comes the gig to a very debatable venue, the Hard Rock Café, Mumbai, with blessings from a major music channel, and various others. Big hoardings go up and suddenly the whole world’s gotta be there and soak up the HUGE DJ and all that tosh.

And so it happens, we enter at about 10: 15ish and come to figure that very conveniently the 1000 (with 500 cover) passes are sold out, and only 2000 (IMFL unlimited) and 3000 (Unlimited foreign liquor), PER HEAD is available, which frankly is a whole load of tosh, and is just another way to rake in cheapshot money for throngs of people waiting to see this “legend”, this absolute Messiah of House music.

After 25 minutes of haggling, my friend cracks a deal of INR 1250 with no cover, and we enter this furnace and melting pot of two groups of people. 12-21 year olds, and surprising a large army of 40+ers; all just waiting for this Ricardo Carvalho lookalike to come and drop the song that every neighbouring DJ X-TACY, DJ I’M-EET, and sundry have dropped.

The ACs don’t seem to be working and its BLOODY hot, crowded (expected), and somehow the sound doesn’t cut it out for me. Pretty similar case to when Armin van Buuren descended here, it’s not a dance music venue, let’s keep it that way (or maybe not considering Bob Sinclar is expected here soon).

However, if the DJ is good any place cuts it out for me. Menno de Jong tore Bonobo apart with a massive set.

So back to the DJ, Mr. Larock started off with a few funky laced tunes, only to be greeted to a muted reception BEGGING, or perhaps DEMANDING Rise Up, and in she came. And to refrain from hyperboles, seriously, 1/4^th of the crowd left for a smoke after the song.

What followed was a mixture of Nirvana (Yes, Kurt Cobain), Justice VS Simian (MTV music awards, sigh), David Guetta (ok fine he’s #3) , Akon, Micheal Jackson (Ok let’s forgive him for this one), amongst other crap, and with the odd over-played classic such as Show Me Love thrown in for good effect.

I went there expecting a Norman Doray or Dirty South-ish kinda vibe and came out, sweating like a tiger (pigs don’t really sweat). Terrible audience, bad sound and just a really overrated DJ. His mixing was pronounced and obvious, the flow of the set was downright questionable, and maybe he’s just above average with the flares and crowd control :)

Gigs like this are maybe fun for the larger audience, and I guess there’s nothing wrong in marketing something, I’m sure everyone but me had fun there but purely from a musical perspective, quite, utterly disappointing.