"Drink all day, play all night"? LMFAO are an easy going, shallow as ditch water, electronic duo, who ruled the Singles Charts in 2011, through a generation spanning feel good pursuit of happiness. As single minded as Cheech and Chongs anything for some weed, the electronic duo Redfoo and Skyblu spent Saturday night slamming it home: "Party and party and party…" , they sang on David Guetta's "Gettin' Over You" while Chris Willis and Fergie lamented the break up of a romance.
The result is a multi-colored, heavy dance, smart as fuck, pop band with gentle and silly videos which they can act out on stage, and a persona so disarming, they are the Wiggles of the 5 – 10 year old demo. At Prudential Center, LMFAO put on a tremendous set which had the mostly young girl audience dancing up and singing along a storm. This wasn't Bieber or One Direction, the girls weren't pursing LMFAO in anything approaching a predatory manner: all they wanted to do was see a wonderful show, packed with dancers, a small band tucked in the back, close circuit TVs, two platforms and two guys in the middle who were relentlessly energetic and smart in their unabashed silliness. The Pre teens love em because they drop their draws and shuffle, the teens love the beats, and everybody else know its offensive but don't know why.
Though apparently its due date is coming up, because the Prudential was half empty and I was forced to upgrade my seat from a side nose bleed to just above the floor. LMFAO just ignored it as they lauded the audience while performing a set with all the exactitude the US showed when invading Grenada. The 90 minute set has no room for improvisation, no place for any real connection, but with Redfoo's ditzy fro leading the way, it is a thoroughly enjoyable show which, through its reveling in its limitations doesn't win you over, but has you from the get go.
The lighting is all yellow and purple and the set is crowded and pun with the LMFAO duo in the middle of the action along with acrobats tumbling people dancing and zebras marauding the stage! The set is a seamless series of set pieces, and even weaker songs, the basketball metaphor "Take It To The Hole" is a blackhole, is better when beach boys are being kicked and thrown.
The best songs are more or less what you thought they were: "Sorry For Party Rocking", their breakthrough hit "I"m In Miami, Bitch", and "Shots" were just excellent show stoppers. "Shots" is so irresponsible it is quite amusing, if Beastie Boys had sung it on Licensed To Ill, we would never have heard the end of it,. Indeed, maybe it is the death of MCA, but the Beastie Boys seemed to haunt the entire evening (Far East Movement had played a tribute earlier in the evening). It is the same irreverent, irreproachable high energy. It allows LMFAO to be pre-programmed because it doesn't delay the hits on the pleasure system. Lady Gaga should have watched it before "The Monster Ball" -she has never come close to this type of pacing. Gaga, Madonna, even the Jacksons the day before, have SOMETHING TO PROVE, so they nudge you. LMFAO just want you to have fun. They don't insist upon it but if you came to dance, you will, and if you cane to watch, you can.
The only song that is serious, "I Am Not A Whore" is greatly appreciated by the audience. It holds a strange place in the pantheon. as it claims Redfoo is not a human sandwich. It feels as though he may be kidding, I mean it is like Cheech And Chong recommending smoking weed judiciously, butI kinda felt the audience need this as a corollary to all the excess. A reminder. Ot was well done.
Redfoo is center and yet a goofball and , now that he has cut his hair, his nephew (Berry Gordy is father and Grandfather) Skyblu is his handsome wingman. Not Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin, no, but in the realm of something like. These guys are the real thing: if you can get over that LMFAO are not here to do anything but party, you can give into their songs easier than contemporaries like Black Eyed Peas. The energy isn't "without end" it is kinetic and bottled up and every song is a singalong. It is an amazing trick, shallow drunken, snatch chasers as sweet unassuming rock and roll stars!
And it is in the process of breaking up. The third empty Prudential Center is one ominous sign, but rumors of fighting about money is a bigger one. It won't be long. So, really, catch them while you can. "The ladies love us when we pour shots, they need an excuse to suck our cocks…"? Can't argue with the logic.
Grade: A-