Meg managed to spin a botched man-on-the-street interview into a few beers with James Rushent from DIOYY?. Check out what she had to say about their gig at the Great Scott!
British electro-rock group Does It Offend You, Yeah? ended the summer on a high note when they shook up the Great Scott in Allston last month.
DIOYY?, whose name is taken from a line in the British version of The Office, has been on tour with Nine Inch Nails, and the band generated some buzz this summer with charged performances at Coachella and Lollapalooza.
A mixed bag of fans turned out for the Great Scott show. Some hovered near the 18+ cut-off, while others clearly hadn’t seen 18 in decades.
A contingent of dance fiends was primed for DIOYY?’s electric synth grooves to light up the room, while rockers looked on to driving guitar riffs and wailing vocals from the band.
Luckily, the hipsters had skipped over the show, and it seemed like nobody there was “too cool” to let loose for the night.
“Let’s Make Out” DIOYY?
DJ Emarce enticed the crowd onto the dance floor with everything from Depeche Mode to the Jackson 5, and after an hour, the room was packed.
Most of the people at the bar had heard about DIOYY? in the alt weeklies or online, and a few others were friends with Emarce, but regardless of how they had arrived, everyone was expecting a killer set from the UK rockers.
I headed to the back of the club to grab one more quick interview when Emarce vacated the stage.
“Have you seen the band play before?” I asked a guy sipping beer in the windowsill.
“What band?”
“Does It Offend You, Yeah?” I yelled over the music.
“Oh, you mean us?” he smirked.
Luckily, James Rushent, the singer and bassist for DIOYY?, found it refreshing that I didn’t recognize him, and soon we were swapping stories at the bar between cigarette breaks.
Known for their high-powered live shows, DIOYY? is often compared to Rage Against the Machine, so it was no surprise when Rushent launched into a story about his first Rage show.
“I saw them at a festival in Belgium in 1994. I had never heard them before, and once they started playing, I just said, ‘What the fuck’?” he explained, still awe-struck.
Rushent went back to England with a new understanding of how a live band can stoke its audience.
DIOYY? put this knowledge into practice when they took the stage. The eager crowd exploded at the opening riff, and the band was electric as they rocked through their set, soaking up the sparks from the audience.
A horde of fans screamed the chorus of Let’s Make Out back to guitarist Morgan Quintance, who swung from the rafters, microphone outstretched.
After a sweat-soaked hour, DIOYY? rounded out the evening with an encore of Devo’s Whip It and left the crowd buzzing as it spilled onto Comm Ave.