Cloak & Dagger, Night 2: Poptone, KMFDM, The Soft Moon, Moon Duo, Zombi, OhGr

Night 2 of Cloak & Dagger was great, but I think I was too tired to enjoy enough of it. We spent the day walking around Burbank, Hollywood, and Downtown LA and may have ended up exhausting what little energy we had left after the first night. Also, I kept getting separated from my friends, and kept going back and forth between venues looking for them. So, it was rough just based on losing track of my friends from the start and then some other related freakouts as a result of this.

Poptone headlined at the Globe Theater and I would have stayed longer if I wasn’t worried about staying awake for the late drive home.  Alexander got some great photos of Poptone near the stage, but we didn’t stay for the whole set. Kind of started leaving during “Movement of Fear” and enjoyed a few more songs in front of the venue before heading home for the evening around 11:30pm. The late nights get exhausting after awhile, especially after the long day I had preceding it!

I got a partial video of “Mirror People” – though I guess a lot of people did! Also, the ending got kind of messed up when the person came back to the chair I was standing near and there’s probably more talking in the balcony than there should be. From what I saw, Poptone have definitely tightened up their performance and their lighting has gotten extra impressive (as you can see from the video)! I wanted to buy one of their special new shirts for this event, but totally forgot about it when I was looking at the merch (more like looking for my friends).

Because of sound problems earlier in the day with OhGr, KMFDM went on around the same time as Poptone and I caught a little of their set before going over to catch the start of Poptone at the Globe. I thought it was pretty cool to have seen both Depeche Mode and KMFDM in the same week. I’m clearly more into Depeche Mode based on my friends, but it was cool to see KMFDM since it’s like a crash course on who’s who in the electronic dance music scene. To me, they are just a funny band name that I didn’t know much about, but if I think Depeche Mode fans are also more amused by the name.

I didn’t really know who OhGr or Zombi were before, but did some research and found out OhGr was some guys from Skinny Puppy (who some of my friends who weren’t there like). Kira seemed to know who all of them were, at least enough to be excited about them beforehand. I started to like them shortly into their set, and I’m not sure I’d listen to them regularly – but I’d be open to checking some things out.

Though I knew sort of who Moon Duo and The Soft Moon were, of course, there’s just a lot of room for confusion based on the name more  than the music – they don’t sound alike at all. I enjoyed them both, though I guess Moon Duo are more the psych rock sound I’m used to. I did enjoy The Soft Moon’s more drum heavy, industrial sound too. I think more of my friends are Moon Duo fans already, but I liked them both.

Zombi was sort of the first band we saw that day, and also when we first separated. Something about their sound just made me very sleepy. It probably was more due to food coma than anything else, and we had used our drink tickets on some alcohol – though that didn’t seem too related.  I was just really tired that day! It’s mostly instrumental, so it kind of put me in a slight trance…

The first and only DJ set we saw during Cloak & Dagger was DJ Adam 12 of She Wants Revenge. After his set, I asked for an autograph on my CD sleeve for their 2nd album “This Is Forever.” We were running into Justin Warfield throughout the whole event, so I finally got up the nerve to ask him for an autograph during the DJ set. Since I’d already gotten a photo of him with Alexander, I figured he’d be willing to sign one autograph. Unfortunately, their actual set was way too late for me (starting 12:45am), so I guess only real night owls were able to see them. Oddly enough, I enjoyed the music more on the 2nd day, but at the same time, was way too tired to really enjoy it.

Kudos to all the Cloak & Dagger people for putting on such a great event, it’s hard to keep this type of thing organized and it seemed like the only thing that threw a wrench into the schedule was sound problems.