¡MAYDAY! Brings the Party

¡MAYDAY! will be playing Friday, August 21, at Transit Lounge - where they regularly play every 3rd Friday.

Anyone that has made their way around Miami party circles will eventually find themselves at Jazid on South Beach during a Mayday Friday (every 4th Friday of the month).  In the already small space, you will be crammed tightly amongst the short skirts, tight shirts, hip-hop heads, and party animals to witness emcees Bernbiz and Wrekonize, keyboardist and band producer (and best beard in Miami) Plex Luthor, drummer L.T. Hopkins, and do-it-all percussionist/DJ/keyboardist/bassist Gianni Cash - Miami's own ¡MAYDAY!.

¡MAYDAY! burst on the scene in 2006, and were quickly signed to Southbeat Records, an upstart Miami record label with the financial and power backing of online dating site Webdate.com.  When they released their first single, Groundhog Day (featuring Cee-lo of Gnarls Barkley), the label was able to blast the link out to millions of people and became one of the most viewed videos on the site.

Unfortunately, Southbeat folded shortly after and ¡MAYDAY! was left looking back at their fast success without an ability to take advantage of the situation.

Thankfully, the band has soldiered on and are now one of the most established bands in Miami.  They've played Rock the Bells, appear at Transit Lounge on every third Saturday, and are in that upper echelon of bands in Miami.

After their initial success in 2006, ¡MAYDAY! took time to regroup, play shows, find their own identity, make some lineup changes (including adding former Southbeat label mate Wreckonize), and have been coming on strong as of late like being voted Best Hip-Hop Artist in the Miami New Times yearly Best Of, and are in the midst of finally releasing new material including The Thinnest Line (in February), a Valentines Day themed EP, Technology, their latest EP, and coming later this year their highly anticipated second full length album.

I sent five questions to Wrekonize about the band, their future, and Miami.

You guys have been establishing yourself in Miami as one of the premiere live acts. Friday nights at Jazid, setting records on YouTube, articles in the New York Times... what are you guys working on now?

We're trying to put out a good signal consistently in a few different formats including another EP towards the end of the year and a few more videos all leading up to the groups 2nd full length album in 2010. Since the buzz fizzled out for MAYDAY a bit after the initial strike, members have been added, a huge amount of focus has been put into the live show, and some new avenues explored from what the music started out sounding like. We also are planning to present a few associated projects, including my solo project.

I would say that !MAYDAY! is one of the best party, live hip-hop acts I've seen. What pushed you in that direction? Was it your original intention of the music - or did it grow that way?

Thank you kindly. All of us collectively get a buzz from music that has a frenzied pace to it, but we have also recorded songs that are more chill and don't necessarily translate well in the live setting as of yet. The key so far has been agreeing on what works and what doesn't. At the end of the day we want people to come out and feel an energy they don't get anywhere else and that sticks with them after the smoke has cleared.

Earlier this year your long time bassist, Primo, left the band and you didn't replace him with another bassist, going instead with a second keyboardist. What does it do to the music? Are you looking for another bassist? Which sound do you prefer?

Primo is an incridible musician and added a furious low end to our live sound. When he left we decided that we wanted to have the live sound better reflect the studio material so adding a 2nd set of keyboards and having Plex and Gio switch off playing basslines ended up being the method to do that. I think it thickens the overall sound and definitely gives the outcome that grimy MAYDAY rattle. After we settled in to that setup Plex picked up the guitar and Gio picked up the bass, so slowly we're expanding the sound with the same amount of players.

Obviously hip-hop music has a huge draw in Miami, particularly up and down Washington Avenue on South Beach, such as hip-hop megavenue Mansion on 12th Street, or Cameo right off Espanola Way, or any other number of venues. How do you feel Miami supports local hip-hop? What do you think can be done to help grow the scene more?

Coming from years in Miami's hip hop scene I'll say this, the majority of clubs on South Beach like Cameo and Mansion with a few exceptions are not Hip Hop clubs at all. They do play hip hop music but the attitudes that drench those clubs is anything but a place for creativity and not giving a shit.

If I get looked up and down at the door I assume the place is an ego runway that overcharges for a Corona. With that being said, I feel MAYDAY has been disconnecting from the hip hop clubs for the most part lately. More often than not, they don't handle live bands very well and the vibe doesn't seem to suit us too well. So we've fallen into this strange hybrid booking category that's tough to pinpoint. A problem we hope the music drowns out.

Why should people love !MAYDAY!?

MAYDAY loves the people. We are an extremely diverse group of guys who don't take anything too seriously and more than anything hope we can break into the herd and rattle a few cages, and we have Indigo Hue™ but i'll leave that for another time. If you've never heard MAYDAY before you can download our most recent projects @ Mayday.Bandcamp.Com and check our videos on Youtube.com/MaydayTv.

(I'll be attaching ¡MAYDAY!'s single Red Carpet Affair from their Technology EP a little bit later)

!MAYDAY!'s Red Carpet Affair off Technology EP

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If You Enjoyed This Post, You May Also Like:

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• Weekend Videos Feb 20-21: Rachel Goodrich's Lightbulb video contest winner, ¡MAYDAY!'s Technology, LaGuardia's Economy Count, and Artopia 2010
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• Miami DDA: DWNTWN Concert Series - March: Spam Allstars
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Tags: !MAYDAY!

This entry was posted on Friday, August 21st, 2009 at 2:04 pm and is filed under Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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