Pop-rock dup Skuzland told us about their M.I.A. experience.
Jazzelle: My favorite show I’ve ever been to was the M.I.A. show at the Riviera Theatre in Chicago in 2014 during her Matangi tour! I was an 18 year old club kid at the time, my friends and I had somehow scraped together coins for tickets. We carried on with the pre-game, naturally, and were running a little late. There were a few smoking employees outside the venue when we walked up, but you could feel the energy (and bass) radiating from the building on your chest.
The place was fucking PACKED. During “Bucky Done Gun” we started bobbing and weaving our way toward the circus of lights on stage. As we inched closer the crazy digital Hindu iconography, projections of tigers and guns and shit put stars in my eyes. Colorful strobe lights sporadically shined light on the crowd of art students, punks, and club kids alike. “Bring the Noize” started blasting and just consider my brain scrambled. Wow. Her energy on stage was just COOL. Effortlessly shepherding the chaos.
Just before she played “BAD GIRLS,” she called for everyone to rush the stage. We had made it close enough to the front for me to make an attempt. I, along with hundreds of other people, scrambled to hop the barrier. I was halfway on stage when I saw an angry little man holding onto my boot trying to pull me back. He wasn’t even security! I kicked him off of me and danced with M.I.A. and a bunch of other bad girls on stage. It was, to this day, one of the best nights of my life. I have always thought M.I.A. was the prototype of what a bad bitch is. She’s raw, defiant, unapologetically political and to see that energy up close has continued to inspire me ever since.
Robot: One of the best gigs I ever saw was one I technically wasn’t in the room for but the journey trying was the best part. I was under the age of 18 and M.I.A. was playing at a 21+ venue in Williamsburg. A bunch of my friends managed to get in with their fake IDs but I unfortunately had mine taken away a few weeks prior. In a desperate attempt to see M.I.A. for the first time, my two friends and I broke into the basement of the building next door.
We made our way through construction tools and into a staircase that led us to the roof neighboring the venue. To our surprise, the roof we were on was much taller than the venue’s — if we jumped down, we risked possibly being stranded if we didn’t make it inside. That's when genius struck me and I realized that we had passed a tall ladder in the basement and could use it to get on and off the other roof. We didn’t hesitate for one second and ran to the basement to grab the ladder. 5 flights and 10 minutes later we managed to slide the ladder onto the venue's roof.
I was overwhelmed with adrenaline and excitement. We were one more step away from possibly seeing my favorite artist of all time perform live. We bravely went down the shaky ladder and ran to the fire exit of the venue hoping it would be open. We pushed and kicked as hard as we could but the door was shut tight, leaving us to watch the last 10 minutes of her set from a small skylight in the ceiling. All of that effort for ten minutes through a small window and it was all absolutely worth it.
Skuzland's "Tell Me You Love Me" is out now.
