Date: Saturday, April 19th, 2014
Line Up: Slightly Stoopid
Venue: Red Rocks Amphitheater. Morrison, CO
Slightly Stoopid was in Colorado celebrating the 420 weekend with a 4/19 show at the infamous Red Rocks amphitheater in Morrison, CO. Honestly, what’s there to say about Red Rocks that isn’t already documented with high praise? Stoopid has made Red Rocks their home away from home, each April, over the last few years and apparently the show sold-out within days of tickets being available.
We at The Pier were at Red Rocks early to celebrate the day’s shenanigans. We had a Tailgate party planned in advance, hosting it a long with our homies at Cheba Hut. What started out as a tailgate party with just The Pier & Cheba Hut, grew to include Seedless Clothing, Yolo Rum, Myxed Up Creations,
Stone Brewery & a ton of fans who stopped by sharing their stories of past Slightly Stoopid events & encounters.
Fans curiously gravitated towards our tailgate party as we were parked alongside Slightly Stoopid’s Mystery Van, the Cheba Hut Bus & the Yolo Rum van. Fans were constantly taking pictures of the Mystery Van, before coming over to the booth where we had FREE merchandise courtesy of Slightly Stoopid and the rest of the vendors who joined us. There was a ridiculous amount of FREE goodies for those that found the Tailgate Party early. Slightly Stoopid donated a box full of T-shirts, Lanyards, Rolling Papers, Lighters, Stickers & Posters; all of it gone in about an hour.
One thing we learned about Red Rocks is to go straight to the Upper North Parking Lot, FIRST! They don’t open the other parking lots until the Upper North lot is completely full. The other benefit of parking there is it’s less of a walk & hike from the parking lot to the bleachers & seating.
The view of the parking lot, from our seats, we spotted cars from 4 different states of Wyoming, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin & North Carolina. Fans drove & flew out from all over the world, not only to see Slightly Stoopid at the infamous Red Rocks Amphitheater, but to also ring in the 4/20 holiday under Colorado’s new decriminalized Marijuana Laws.
Rain, snow or shine, fans in Colorado could care less about the weather when live music is involved. What started out as a nice day, quickly turned to gray clouds & rain towards 5-6pm, just as the doors to the show opened. By the time we put everything away from the tailgate party and made our way into the venue, we had missed the 2 opening acts, but found our place in the bleachers about 15minutes before Slightly Stoopid took the stage.
Slightly Stoopid, at its peak, had 8 members on stage between the backline, guitar, percussion, keys & a 3 person horn section led by Karl Denson; but there were no signs of C-Money. The entire place was drenched as us fans stood in the bleachers with our clothes damp and heavy from the rain & this continued as Slightly Stoopid began their set. During their set, there were stage crew who would squeegee the stage floor in an effort to clear out puddles that kept forming from the constant rain.
Luckily for the stage crew, all it took was the first 3-4 songs of Slightly Stoopid’s set for the rain to clear out. It was as if Slightly Stoopid found a formula with their music to make the rain go away. By the 5th song, I looked up and could see stars appearing in between clouds that continued to disappear as the music played. Slightly Stoopid 1, Bad Weather 0 – Although I can’t give too much credit to Slightly Stoopid. Fans get a nod for the assist as they were fiercely blowing this mysterious smokey substance into the sky and they did so throughout the rest of Stoopid’s performance. A corny side of me would like to think the stars told the clouds to move, so they could get a better view & listen of Slightly Stoopid.
Slightly Stoopid played a lot of older material with songs such as “Devils Door”, “Pussy Gets Wet”, “Wicked Rebel”, “Running With A Gun”, “Sensimilla”, “Everything You Need”, “2AM” along with my favorite performance of the night with, “Ese Loco”. I’ve been seeing Slightly Stoopid live for no less than 15 years and I loved every nostalgic second of them performing “Ese Loco”.
Slightly Stoopid has really evolved their sound over the years and have grown to include a lot of live instrumentation with keys, percussion & a horn section. While I do love the growing evolution of Slightly Stoopid’s sound, there’s just no replacing the classic 3-piece performance of their older material and that’s what they did when performing “Ese Loco”; they went from having 8 members on stage, to just the 3 piece.
Being in Colorado, the guys threw up a big shout out to Mr. John Denver, by playing their classic cover of JD’s “Leaving on a Jet Plane”. Other classics the group performed was “This Joint”, “Officer,” “Dancing Mood” and “Don’t Stop”.
It’s very rare that Slightly Stoopid puts on a show that disappoints. There’s so much musical depth to this group who have perfected their live set, it’s easy to see how they’ve separated themselves from others in the scene. Just because there are 8 members on stage, doesn’t mean they’re all playing at once. Each instrument has a part that is added to compliment the sound, rather than saturating the performance with too much instrumentation. Just because they had a horn section, percussion & keys, doesn’t mean they used it for every song and knew when to add or subtract each instrument in, only to leave you guessing how they would perform each song. From reggae to punk rock, ska & hip-hop, fans were treated to an array of musical genres and a lot of them were featured all in one song.
All in all, it was a great performance & hanging with Cheba Hut, Yolo Rum, Myxed Up & Stone Brew was a great way to celebrate & prepare for the night’s performance. Some lessons learned for next time at Red Rocks is to always go to the Upper North Parking Lot, first and you’re safe to get there at about 2:00pm for a decent parking spot. If you’re going to see a show at Red Rocks in April, bring a poncho, it makes all the difference in the world in case it does rain. Colorado’s weather is really unpredictable & you’ll be thankful you didn’t skip out on the poncho.
Related Links:
Slightly Stoopid Website
Slightly Stoopid Facebook
Cheba Hut Website
Yolo Rum Website
Myxed Up Creations Website
Article by: Mike Patti
Photos by: Vinh Nguyen
More Photos From The Night…
