Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Dave Chappelle Surprise in Downtown Portland


Rumors surfaced late Tuesday afternoon through tweets from Local35 that Dave Chappelle would do a live show, downtown at midnight. Chappelle told the staff he planned to go buy an amp to do a free live show at pioneer square at midnight. As the staff passed on the message things started to circle and the word spread like fire. As early as 10:00pm people had begun to gather at the square. The blogs and tweets continued to work furiously to convince all 18-30 yrs olds that Dave Chappelle would pull this crazy stunt possibly in an attempt to refuel a mysteriously evaporated career. Accounts of him entering local businesses, and encountering people on the street began to suggest he was telling everyone he saw.

I contributed wholeheartedly to spread the word and arranged to meet people at the square. We watched the KGW Live Cam from the apartment, refreshing once every minute. The crowd began to build so we decided it was time to head down. We arrived at about 11:45pm and ran into DJ Sacrilicous confirming earlier message board rumors that he would be in attendance. He told us about his new mix "The Scratchatory Tape" which had just dropped. Unfortunately, midnight came and went with little more than feeble attempts to rally the crowd into chant.

Many of my group decided to leave around 12:30; early morning commitments for most of them. I stuck around with DJ Sacrilicious, and just after 1am the entire crowd was shocked to see Dave Chappelle emerge out of the once drowsy audience and get up on the stage in front of nearly 4,000 exhilarated Portlanders.

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Dave fought for control of the crowd for the next hour. He had brought a very small battery powered amp, and called for the assistance of Pure Hype Entertainment's Pierre Stephane who would hold the amp up for the crowd for the next 65 minutes.

As Dave fought for control, by pleading for silence in attempt to tell us all "something very important" the lack of sound lost his message to a 75% majority of the crowd. Eventually he gets the crowd to settle for long enough for him to say "I learned today... that you can't tell a secret in Portland." The small portion of the crowd that could hear his "Duracell" powered amp burst into laughter, as the rest of the crowd felt left out and made their concerns heard with roars of demands to shift the speaker.

The woman that accompanied him on stage got an opportunity to play one song whit her acoustic guitar, but again the amp had trouble hitting more than 250 people. I heard him say, "I really didn't expect this many people." to which the Portland crowd patted themselves on the back with a fury of applause.

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Throughout his performance a few people came on stage with a much larger speaker system, and frantically searched for electricity for almost the entirety of his time on stage.Cords were hand off one by one through to the back of the crowd, where a few individuals on the stage were certain there were outlets. Eventually with the assistance of the police they were informed that the city turns off power to Pioneer Square at midnight.

Just after 2am he said goodbye and thank you, telling us the cops need us to vacate the square in an orderly fashion at. Chappelle attempted to leave the now -at capacity- stage and there was a bit of a struggle as people rushed him for autographs and to hand him notes and fliers. I got a few pictures and some decent video. Will upload video soon.



http://soundcloud.com/djsacrilicious

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

As you may very well have noticed, I did not post at all during March. Fear not, this is not because I have not been going to shows and getting footage. I have been backed up with school, and also encountered some technical difficulties with my editing software. I have a bunch of footage to go through from shows throughout March, and already this month as well. So stay tuned, as I will likely be loading a bunch of it all at once.

**All of my videos are available for free download on my Vimeo page. Email me with any questions. (nichollsaaron@gmail.com)

Friday, March 20, 2009

Senses Fail and Hollywood Undead

I'd like to start this post with a quick shout out to my boy Tom Flynn, who went to this show with me and lost a shoe. haha. We attended this show for one reason only... Senses Fail. Hollywood Undead is a joke as far as I'm concerned, but I that didn't keep me from taking some pretty great video of them. Senses played pretty well, although I have seen them twice before and this was the least entertaining of the three. Hollywood Undead sold this place out, and had the entire crowd going nuts the whole time, so I guess a few people think they are alright. The Senses Fail video is just one straight video of three songs, and I almost drop my camera at one point. The Undead video is actually an edit of some of the footage I got. The show was a blast, go check the videos.


Senses Fail from Aaron Nicholls on Vimeo.


Hollywood Undead from Aaron Nicholls on Vimeo.

Monday, March 9, 2009

K'NAAN

I was catching up with an old friend of mine over the internet recently, and as it often does, music came up. I asked him who he had been listening to lately, and he asked me if I had heard of K'NAAN. I had no idea who he was talking about, but he insisted I check it out. The very next day I saw an advert for this show which happened to be the following night, and so I went. Before heading to the show I downloaded K'NAAN's album, and I wasn't really impressed. His live show however, changed my mind and I think everyone should give him a listen. I took quite a bit of video at the show; so I took a few of the best clips and attempted to edit them together, I'm still getting the hang of seamlessly taking you through the show using multiple cuts. Anyway, check it out.


K'NAAN from Aaron Nicholls on Vimeo.

Sunday, March 1, 2009