He has more than four million Facebook fans, though given the speed at which his following has grown, that number could double by the time this story hits the newsstands. His fame has grown exponentially in the six years since he released his first recording. But cults are usually small Deadmau5’s followers are legion.
The devotion of his fans is cult-like: they follow him from show to show, tattoo his logo on their arms and calves, and post thousands of gushing comments about him and his music online. The audience screams and swoons as if for a rock god. He’s surrounded by towers of strobe lights and projectors, all flashing in sync with the thump of his music. He doesn’t sing (he hires guest vocalists for some tracks), but operates a bank of computers and occasionally waves at the audience. He stands high above the audience in a specially designed, spacecraft-like cube. The helmet looks goofy, but it’s important: it was key in Zimmerman’s transformation from a dance music outsider into a mainstream icon.īefore Zimmerman started appearing in his mask, his style of fast-paced rave music was typically played in a warehouse accessed via a dark alley. When he performs, Zimmerman wears his own electronically enhanced mouse mask, what fans call a Mau5head. Deadmau5 (pronounced “dead mouse”) is the nom de guerre of the Toronto electronic music artist Joel Zimmerman. They were worn as a tribute to the musician Deadmau5, who was the headlining act that night. The helmets’ eyes were blank and bulging, their crescent mouths leering grins. Some of the dancers wore cartoonish, oversized mouse helmets that bobbed side to side and back and forth. The show should have been a flop instead, it became a frenzied dance party, like Woodstock on methamphetamines.
The rain and the force of thousands of feet had turned the park into a swampy field of splattering mud. (Image: Matt Barnes)Ī steady August downpour drenched Chicago’s Grant Park on the final night of the Lollapalooza music festival. Mouse pad: Joel Zimmerman’s downtown condo has jägermeister on tap.
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