I Got Trolled By Frank Ocean and James Blake in Bristol Last Night, and I'm Pissed Off

The entire internet—for a few hours yesterday_was flipping and splashing about like a million dolphins in mating season. James Blake had announced that his three stop 1-800 Dinosaur tour would be joined by a very special guest called BOYSDONTCRY (flyer below), and did so using puns and pictures which suggested, without much subtlety, that it would be the incomparably prodigious Frank Ocean, whose recently announced new record shares the same name. And then every music outlet in the world reported what seemed to be inevitable as probable fact: James Blake was touring with Frank Ocean, and it would begin that night in Bristol in the UK. Except that didn't happen at all. Nothing did. The entire evening was a massive upset.

Despite being located very firmly in London, and with the small obstacle of possessing exactly zero pounds and zero pence to my name, I decided I had to be there. This is the era of Kanye playing Koko with no notice; you've gotta be impulsive to keep up. Four hours later, after blowing my cash stash for the week on a ticket and travel, and performing an ungainly Home Alone 2 inspired sprint through London's Victoria train station, I found myself heavily sweating on a Megabus to Bristol. I had a date with destiny and hoped destiny would drop something massive.

When I got there, and saw the huge line outside Bristol's Lakota venue, it was clear I was one of many coming for that exact reason. "Frank Ocean's going to drop new shit," nineteen year old Fray (below) told me, "he has to!" Most people were confidently assured that he would be unveiling the entirety of his new album, performing live with James Blake and doling out a greatest hits set. Another guy, Alex, proved to be a lone voice of reason drowning in a sea of hype. "He's not going to drop new shit. He's not even going to sing—he'll just DJ."

As it turned out, he couldn't even manage to do that. And when James Blake reneged on his playful puns on Facebook at around 10 PM, things didn't look good for the Channel Orange loyalists in attendance.

(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_GB/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.3"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));

As previously said earlier today, Frank and I are not performing live or on tour—we're on a 1-800 DINOSAUR road trip…

Posted by

James Blake

on

Thursday, 9 April 2015

The best I can say is that Frank Ocean was there, somewhere, in the vicinity, but he never touched a CDJ nevermind a microphone. He just hung around at the back for three hours, and as disappointment become gradually inevitable things started to get a little sad and ugly. When James Blake came on to do his DJ set, it just ended up raising false hope. Breaking out Donell Jones and dancehall classic "Applause" directly after a set comprising of thumping bass and beats suggested the music direction might be leaning towards Ocean, but that moment never came.

Trim tried his best to win the room over, but by then the crowd were restless. Eventually, some people were just standing by the stage, hammering on the wood, angrily chanting "WE WANT FRANK!" Klaus, the DJ on at the time, responded by progressively spinning more hardcore DnB to an audience who wanted nothing more than to catch a whisper of "Pyramids."

Wandering into the smoking area I found a load of frustrated and fucked attendees. "You're a beautiful seahorse," one gentleman muttered when I asked him if he was disappointed with Frank's no-show. Another chancer pressed a CD into my hand, complete with manually penned tracklist. "I was going to give it to Frank," he sighed, "but you'll have to do."

James Blaggian had disappointed. We had been trolled. And most people in attendance woke up this morning feeling pretty angry. Once I'd brushed the lightest of week-night sleep from my eyes—having traveled back to London from Bristol in the early hours—I reached out to a few people I'd met the night before to gauge their morning-after thoughts. Here's what they said:

Francis: "For the final hour we were stood staring into the middle distance. Trim and the other 1800 dinosaur guys had done an amazing job of hyping the crowd up but it reached a point where they just seemed like they were stalling. We left half an hour early which felt like we had at least salvaged some dignity. I felt stood up."

Tom: "It felt like everyone on the tour was in on the joke, and people who'd paid money thinking they were going to see Frank were left feeling betrayed."

George: "Last half hour was quite simply shit. Boos were heard, lights came up and the crowd left feeling well and truly stitched up."

Basically, dissatisfaction was the overarching theme of the night. Even those who hadn't expected an LA superstar to roll up and release a brand new record were unhappy with what they'd been served. As I slowly froze my nether regions off searching for my friendly blue Megabus in the early hours of the dawn, I contemplated what had gone wrong. Had the entire enterprise been doomed from the first puntastic Instagram posts that suggested Frank would be playing? It didn't really matter. Everyone I'd met at Lakota had gone there looking to have a genuinely good time—on the basis that Frank Ocean had been "added to the lineup"—and been massively let down.

It feels too generous to pass the incident off as miscommunication between the pair: James Blake is well aware of the effect an Ocean name drop has on internet chatter, and it's hard to believe he wouldn't have foreseen the ensuing reaction and mad rush to grab tickets. It certainly didn't help that he waited until after the event was sold out, hours after rumors first surfaced, and minutes before doors opened, to tell everyone Frank wouldn't be appearing in some form, whether DJing or playing live.

Maybe James wasn't at fault and Frank pulled out. Who knows? We don't know what prevented Frank from jumping up on stage and cracking out a few bangers, but the mass of people who packed out the venue last night would have been happy with just catching a peek of pop's most mysterious figure. They deserved something more. Instead everyone was trolled. Hard. Please tell me where to file my Megabus and ticket receipts.

You can follow Moya Lothian-McLean on Twitter.