Last night was deadmau5's much-anticipated fill-in set for a hospitalized Avicii at the Ultra Music Festival 2014, and everyone's astonished. Seriously, if you have an RSS feed reader and follow EDM blogs, all you're seeing is "OMGZ DEADMAU5 EPIC TROLL" because he, um, played EDM at an EDM festival. Yes, if you read the tweets up above, you can see that he had troll dreams and was being a "dick," but it's not like he played a Metallica album front to back. He pretty much played a few tracks that Avicii would've played anyways, which only feels more "troll-y" because of who deadmau5 was, regardless of his intent.
Doesn't make this any more epic, especially when you consider that the "Old McDonald" edit of Martin Garrix's "Animals" was something Ookay was dropping back in December.
Truth be told, the funniest bit was Tiesto being supportive of deadmau5 playing "Levels," then immediately realizing it might have been "sarcastic." It's a weird situation; deadmau5 was legit helping out, giving the people a dope live act to close out the second night of Ultra 2014, because Avicii couldn't do it. If he was truly about disrespect, he would've not taken the booking, right? It's a commendable thing he did. So what if he had fun with it - this is deadmau5 we're talking about. This is what he does.
At the end of the day, deadmau5 was himself: he played the troll, but he also played the techno. Anyone shocked or surprised needs to lighten up or remember who we're talking about. Props to deadmau5 for a) stepping into a huge slot for the people and b) having some fun with it.
