M.I.A. Was Here??!!

Last weekend was THE big concert on Vassar campus—and while we may not have the money to score such acts as Radiohead (who does?), we do pretty well for ourselves. In the past, we’ve had artists like Wyclef Jean (my sophomore year), The Clash (wait, The Clash played at Vassar? Huh?), The Roots (if only I was here for them!), The Red Hot Chili Peppers (that must have been before they were famous…), Vampire Weekend (pretty popular right now), TV on the Radio (last year… they were good but the venue was awful), and Talib Kweli (awesome!). This year we were fortunate to get rising hip-hop star M.I.A., who, if you have never heard of her, just released her second album, entitled “Kala” (a personal favorite of mine). While I may kind of live in the Vassar bubble, *I think* she’s becoming pretty big in the “real world.”

The concert sold out in record time, 3 hours (I’m sure the smallish size of the venue was also a factor), but luckily, yours truly was able to score a ticket at 9:30am the day the ticket office on campus opened. Thank God I have an awesome boyfriend who was willing to wake up early enough to stand in line, because within the next couple hours the tickets were G-O-N-E.

Judging from the rate at which the tickets sold out, we knew the concert would be ridiculous (but in a good way!). We decided to arrive about halfway through the opening act, and I’m kind of sorry we purposely arrived late because he turned out to be pretty awesome. The opening act was a DJ, and while I’m skeptical of DJ’s (they are a live act, but I never thought of them as being as authentic as a band), I’m glad that I decided to check it out because it was a lot of fun.

At around 9:30, M.I.A. came on stage. The crowd went WILD (well, what were you expecting?). I called my poor brother at West Point (he’s also a fan) and let him listen to the screams of the crowd as M.I.A. went into her first song. She proceeded later during the concert to let the guys on stage for the song “Boyz,” at which point a bouncer had to come on stage and knock out some guy who tried to push his way past security guards after M.I.A. decided that there were already too many guys on stage, which was exciting. She also had a pretty amazing encore where she sang “URAQT,” one of my faves from her last album, and her new single “Paper Planes.”

The concert was probably my favorite at Vassar thus far, despite having a huge guy (who probably weighed close to 250 lbs) in front of me for about half the concert, stepping on my feet, and then leaving the concert without hearing and an awful ringing in my ears that lasted throughout the next day. Oh well—it was still awesome!