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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
Full Flex shakes things up at Shaw Park
BORIS MINKEVICH / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Colourful fans enjoy the Full Flex Express Tour at Shaw Park on Wednesday. (WINNIPEG FREE PRESS) Photo Store
It was a sea of neon colours, short-shorts and even a few Skrillex-style haircuts as ground-shaking bass filled Shaw Park Wednesday night for what fans said is the biggest electronic event to ever hit the city.
The Full Flex Express Tour made its fourth stop in Winnipeg, the creation of electronic dance music DJ Skrillex. Skrillex set off across Canada, starting in Toronto on July 13, by train accompanied by his chosen names in the electronic dance music scene around the world.
His goal? To reimagine the concert experience.
The event definitely had more of a festival feel, set up outdoors in the Goldeyes ballpark with a main stage and a B stage featuring a wide range of electronic dance music.
That's what makes the concert that more appealing to Garth Coutu, 20.
"You can't call (the music) anything," he said. "They go from one genre to the next. They interchange."
The mood was one only earth-shattering, core-shaking, Euro-style electronic dance music can create; this was not only a party, but an experience that fosters spontaneous dancing and fist-pumping among the 17-27 demographic. One only topped as Skrillex boarded his spacecraft trimmed with LEDs. "We've been waiting months for this," said Ryan Kotak, 18, standing next to his four friends decked out in neon with various odes to electronic music scrawled on the front and back. "There's concerts and then there's Skrillex," he laughs.
Full Flex opened with DJing from TOKiMONSTA followed by DJing duo KOAN Sound.
Grimes started the party on the mainstage, with their combination of voice, video and sound. This included dancing, green lizard women and shirtless men with gold-painted water guns. And, of course, bubbles.
This was definitely an event you had to dress up for, cut up neon-coloured shirts with tributes to Skrillex written all over them, or multicolour furry boots to sport in the heat.
Or it was the type of event where you simply dressed down -- short-shorts and bikini tops or ripped jeans and no shirt at all.
But for intense electronic dance music fans it meant preparing outfits days and weeks ahead. Megan Poirier, 18, wore a homemade, neon pink ripped-up shirt with the words 'Drop the bass' painted on the front, and on the back 'Full Flex Tour Skrillex.'
"This is the best event that's come to this city," she said.
But Skrillex can't take all the credit for the Flex Tour creation. The idea, he has stated, is based on the 1970 tour called Festival Express, when Janis Joplin, The Grateful Dead and The Band led a train full of musicians across Canada in a similar fashion. A documentary of the concerts finally hit silver screens in 2003.
Stefan Newfeld, 27, has heard stories about that train ride. His father was a cook on the train.
"He said it was amazing," Newfeld said, hanging with his friends at Skrillex's version of the tour 42 years later. "This is this generation's version of that,"
TOKiMONSTA
KOAN Sound
Hundred Waters
Grimes
Diplo
Pretty Lights
Skrillex
Fans pack Shaw Pack for the Skrillex-headlining show
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition July 19, 2012 C3
History
Updated on Thursday, July 19, 2012 at 10:40 AM CDT: added slideshow
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