Concert Report: DJ Zedd (Universal Studios)

By in Concerts

Mardi Gras celebrations continue through April 7th at Universal Studios.
But their Mardi Gras concert series, which has really been stacked this year, ended last night.
Their concerts take place in this bandshell area near the Hollywood Rip Ride Rocket attraction.
By 6PM the crowd was already filling-in the lawn. Arriving early is the only way to assure a decent vantage but it also meant you had to contend with more than two hours of New Orleans-style Zydeco music!
The ride would continue to operate during the concert but the concert and crowd were way too loud to ever hear the screams up there.
Packed to the rafters!
Spotted: Fellow Photographer Alex
And then shortly after 8:30PM, to a huge roar of the crowd, there he was! Zedd (D). He opened with his remix of massive John Summit (USA) hit “Where You Are” and followed that with one of his own, “I Want You To Know” ft. Selena Gomez (USA). That was written in 2015 when he was dating her.
Zedd was born in Russia but emigrated to Germany by age 3 so he is considered to be a German DJ. His real last name begins with a “Z” which we pronounce “Zee” in American English but is pronounced “Zed” in British & Canadian English.
We’re definitely in the “Golden Era” of EDM music right now and his concert was a continuous stream of EDM hits such as Lana Del Rey (USA) “Summertime Sadness“, Martin Garrix (F) “Animals” and David Guetta (F) “Titanium“.
Of course he played plenty of his own catalog of Dance hits including “Stay“, “Beautiful Now” and “The Middle”. While all EDM, many of his songs also crossed-over to the Top 40 charts.
Thus, everyone knew the words…..and they sang-along too!
Zedd was voted #47 in the DJMag Top 100 DJ’s polling last year.
He played on Saturday night at EDC-Orlando last November on the KineticFIELD main stage.
Disco is always welcome and he gave us some House remixes of Bee Gees (GB) “How Deep Is Your Love” and Abba (S) “Gimme Gimme Gimme”.
Short versions of Darude (FIN) “Sandstorm” and Orlando’s ACRAZE (USA) “Do It To It“.
The relatively unknown Zedd first appeared in Orlando back in September, 2011 when he played at Vain Nightclub. (Vain is now Celine). We recall Dillon Francis (USA) opened for this Insomniac/HTG event.
At the one hour mark Zedd paused to thank the crowd, tell how it’s the first time he’s ever performed in a theme park and commented about how hot it was. He had done so much bouncing up there that you could see he was drenched in sweat.
Early hit “Clarity“.
Great show! As mentioned in our Friday night article, it does my heart proud to see how electronic dance music has been embraced by Millennials and Generation Z.
A good time was had by all.