Thursday night I got to see Passion Pit at the Troubadour in LA, and my companion for the show was a girl I met right here on the Audio Muffin. Okay, so it wasn’t so much a date as alluded to in the title (a bit of sensational reporting).

The backstory is simply this; I bought a couple tickets to the show and when I presented this info to my friends they responded with, “Passion what?” Which is a completely unacceptable answer. So Hot Dog came up with the idea to fish for a date using the bakery. It was an unnerving prospect, but figuring the worst that could happen was I got stabbed, we had Train hook it up.

After a few responses to the “contest” I decided on Muffin reader Suzanne. Which turned out to be the best decision I think I could have made (sorry guy with Korn in his email address).

We met at the Troubadour really early, eight o’ clock. Once inside the bouncer immediately asked Suzanne if she was the “silly soap baby” or something like that. She flatly denied of knowing what he was talking about, but as I can’t remember exactly what he said, I’ll never know (but I like to think there is some crazy viral youtube video of her out there that she can’t live down).

I won’t post a photo of Suzanne, but she was definitely cute and being a hair stylist had an edgy look, and a personality to match – but not too crazy, we had a lot of musical things in common and we chatted during a good amount of the show (we got there while they were still sweeping the place).

The first act was Cale Parks, who was the first one-man band I’ve seen who specialized in percussion. He reminded me of Edward Scissorhands, tight clothing, bouncing on his tip-toes, and wielding his drum sticks like carving sheers. His singing wasn’t all that great, and Suzanne and I agreed that this important detail lent him more to a novelty act than someone you will be hearing about one day.

Up next was the Harlem Shakes. And once again Suzanne and I were on the same level, she said something like, “I don’t own any of their records or anything, but from what I know about them I expect them to be really good live.” I completely agreed and they were exactly that.

It was then that the three hundred or so people in attendance crowded into the tiny venue and the energy started to grow. Everyone there was smiling in anticipation of Passion Pit taking the stage, knowing this might be the coolest place to be in LA at that moment.

Oh, and I must mention, out of all the well behaved patrons in attendance, we happened to be right next to some drunk bitch who was fighting with her boyfriend (Suzanne claims they were both girls, but it was a hard call). So let me just say, if you are at a show and you made the unfortunate decision to bring a friend who becomes the dumb drunk bitch, I’m sorry, but your show is over. Grab their wrist and get the fuck out! (Which they did, but way past the allotted time limit for drunk bitches at concerts)

Passion Pit grabbed the stage, and of course, blew everyones mind all over the place. I was delighted to see how humble the band’s leader, Michael Angelakos was. He thanked the audience after each tune, and seemed genuinely surprised that people come to listen to his band.

The first song they played was with what, for the most part, was a traditional band. They had a couple keyboards, a drummer, a bass guitar, and an electric guitar. At which point I thought to myself, “Wow, traditional instruments, weird.” That song ended though, the instruments were dropped to the floor and we now had everyone but the drummer playing big fat keyboards. They also had a drum machine going for many songs and the physical drummer provided fills, harder hitting kicks, and guided the breakdown.

The electronic noise was pretty intense. I’ve been to quite a few shows at the Troubador, and this one bumped more than any I’ve been to. And it wasn’t annoying, loud, hard rock bumping, it was dance music, pure and simple. And everyone there got into the spirit – which created a really fun show.

The moral of the story is thus; if you are a cool chick and have no one to see a cool show with, hit us up at the Audio Muffin. We are here to help.

Passion Pit – The Reeling

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Passion Pit – Sleepyhead

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Harlem Shakes – Strictly Game

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If you liked this post you might also like Train serving up Harlem Shakes as a cure for the recession or Find out how they get down at NYC jam-packed shows.