1. As much as Thievery Corporation come across as a DJ duo on CD, they don’t really live it out live. In addition to incorporating organic instruments and lead singers that take the stage as performers, they tend to just play songs straight. They didn’t leave any room for improvisation or even a short showcase resembling a DJ set. Kind of earns them the label “studio DJs.”
2. When a live band gets mixed with DJs and they’re playing groove-centric songs to the T, things are rarely unexpected, or exciting. Save a couple percussion solos, someone with sitar skills, hearing anything from The Cosmic Game, and the breakdown in the set closer “Warning Shots,” there were no real surprises. Which they totally try to make up for with a wall-sized backdrop of LED lights.
3. As awesome as LED lights can look behind people, Thievery Corporation’s lighting technicians would do well to put some light on resident spinners Rob Garza and Eric Hilton for more than a second – and furthermore, something other than red. Really, it’s no fun for us photographers in the pit.
4. Thievery Corporation had as many as seven different lead singers grace the stage for the closing night of their tour. And each and every one owned the stage like rock stars and divas, just as they owned their respective songs. The winner of the night: LouLou, the Iranian-American lounge queen.
5. Expecting deep remixes on the fly from a lounge-y, hip-hop/trip-hop, pan-cultural DJ duo juggling seven different lead singers from as many countries on the final night of their tour was, in hindsight, a little unreasonable. My bad.
TEXT & PHOTO BY CHRIS ZAKORCHEMNY