Live DC: Cobra Starship @ 9:30 Club

March 6, 2008 by stephanie  Send to a Friend

By Lexi

Photos by Stephanie

Upon arriving I heard a girl outside to guys who couldn’t get in to 9:30 Club cause it was sold out - “You haven’t seen cobra? You’re nuts!”

I’m not kidding.

For some reason these kids go ape shit over Cobra Starship. Purple American Apparel hoodies, keytars, dance pop and nike dunks. It’s hipster music for the youngins. Ironically, however, Cobra Starship was born out of the remains of punk rock powerhouse Midtown. After aligning himself with Pete Wentz and the Fall Out Boys, Gabe Saporta helped to propel the dance pop-rock movement mainstream appealing to little girls everywhere. If you still have no idea who or what the fuck I am talking about, they are the Snakes on a Plane band. The theme song? Remember?

Anyways….

The last time Cobra Starship was in town when they were the initial opening act for The Academy Is…. This time around opening for Cobra Starship were The Cab, We The Kings, and Metro Station, highly buzzed-about up and coming bands in the pop-rock world.

The young, mostly underage female crowd provided harmonies on songs and knew every line to most of the choruses. There may not have been a mosh pit, or anything of the sort, but after the first song a young girl was thrown from the crowd only to proceed to pass out from exhaustion. Damn these kids take this stuff seriously.

Throughout their set Gabe thanked the crowd for their attendance constantly, but modestly admitted, “the point of the show isn’t to play some relatively good songs and shake our sweet little asses…but to spread the message of the cobra”. The exact “message of the cobra” wasn’t made evident, but assisting the message were strobe lights, onstage banter with guitarist Ryland, and backing tracks. Between songs, Gabe and guitarist Ryland personalized the performance with a lot of crowd interaction. At one point Gabe called everyone’s attention to the one fan who had a Mohawk in the audience, as the fan had beaten guitarist Ryland in a pre-performance RockBand battle. (The band challenges fans to a game of RockBand before every show on the tour). When Ryland admitted it was his first loss to a fan, Gabe invited the Mohawked-fan to join the band on stage, announcing, “Cobra Starship is not a band for losers.”

Gabe also shared personal stories with the audience, like a relationship he had with an older Hispanic woman, and proceeded with a “shoutout to all of the Hispanic boys and girls in the house.”

The one “serious song” that was played was indistinguishable to the other songs in its “hey-oh” gang vocals and heavy guitar solo, but the crowd didn’t seem to care. In another song, a band member used a maraca during a song that clearly had a pre-recorded track, which somehow went unnoticed by the dumb crowd.

Highlights of the show included the guitar solos and humor provided by Ryland, Gabe’s beatboxing, and the multi-colored drum kit lights. Any longtime listener of Cobra Starship would have recognized a closing song as “Hollaback Boy”, one of the first two Cobra Starship songs released (and quickly taken off of their myspace when Gwen Stefani threatened a lawsuit), but embarrassingly enough, the crowd unknowingly sang the actual “Hollaback Girl” over Gabe’s rendition. The band has an odd dynamic with the audience, as the audience is essentially oblivious to just how shallow the band’s façade is. What once was novel is no longer funny, but it seems that Cobra Starship will continue writing songs as long as they’re selling t-shirts. Cobra Starship was once for the wit, but now it’s about selling out.

The last song pretty much sums the whole night up perfectly. When the music began for Snakes on a Plane, Gabe called a fan up to sing the rap verse originally recorded by Travis McCoy from Gym Class Heroes. The sentiment seemed genuine on Gabe’s part until the fan didn’t know all of the words. What a douche.

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