Where else can you find tantalizing live looping and beat making that’s simultaneously the most raunchy and entertaining experience you’ve yet to see, layered with live, sex-positive banter and interaction with concert attendees, and a completely improvised musical experience set against a bounce house inspired stage design? The answer is a Marc Rebillet set. But not just any Marc Rebillet concert, but the 2023 Red Rocks Amphitheater headlining set. This one was irrevocably special as it went down in the 39-degree, misty wet weather at one of the most iconic venues in the country.
I had seen Marc twice before. In fact, I actually had a beer with the guy over ten years ago at Goodfriend Beer Garden in Dallas, Texas. He and my good friend were moving to Brooklyn and I stopped in to say goodbye (shoutout to you, Marge – love you). Fast forward almost a decade later when I hopped on the “Loop Daddy” train rather late in 2020. I caught his wildly entertaining set at Austin City Limits Music Festival in 2021 and only a few weeks after that, I found myself at his show in Asheville, North Carolina. He actually ended up the same after party as me, but you can learn more on that if and when I release my memoir in 30 years.
Fast forward again to a fresh move to Denver, Colorado two years later, I had another opportunity to see the magical musical maestro at none other than Red Rocks – a venue that is sacred to me and so many others. In a full-circle, serendipitous moment, a wonderful friend (thanks, Gabe) gifted me a ticket to the Red Rocks show and I eagerly began to prepare for my first COLD edition at the outdoor amphitheatre. With the weather charting 39-degree temperatures and light rain, I bundled up in my warmest gear and made the careful but brief drive to the show. Unfortunately, my last-minute timing did not allow me to catch the freestyle don Harry Mack. Mack’s improvisational skills in the world of intentional rhyming have brought him huge accolades, and for damn good reason.
I strolled the long flights of stairs from the lower north parking lot just in time to catch the majority of the vivacious Emily King‘s set. Her soulful, blues-pop sound has sparked waves for this New York musician and her lovely band since 2007. The excitement King had for playing Red Rocks and opening for her super pal Marc was palpable, with Emily hyping up and thanking Rebillet enthusiastically throughout her 40-minute slot.
As soon as the clock struck nine, 9,000 bundled up fans who had been holding it down in the drizzly wet cold for over two hours were now all standing in pure enthusiasm. It was time for the spectacle that was about to ensue – it was time for King Loop Daddy to make his appearance. In the truest and most extra fashion, Marc Rebillet made an entrance like none other I have seen in my handfuls of shows at this outdoor mecca.
Queued by Marc’s voice exclaiming “I’M UP HERE MOTHERFUCKERS!” and “YOU’RE LOOKING IN THE WRONG PLACE,” the congregation of Red Rockets and Rockettes feverishly peeked everywhere before we finally figured out where the commotion was commotion-ing – the very top center row of the park. Clad in a sheer studded and silver disco-ball vintage jumpsuit, Rebillet gollum-ed his way down the entire 70 rows, shouting and proclaiming his entry as the sea of music lovers parted the rocky red sea for the wildly lovable entertainer. A pure synchronicity, I happened to be towards the center of row 16 and was able to eye the artist as he was “COMING RIGHT THROUGH THIS FUCKING HOLE – YES” as he put it. What a way to get the people going!
Now if you aren’t familiar with Marc Rebillet, here is a quick synopsis of this one-man band and his creative powers. With a background in classical piano and a very interesting career creating hilariously improvised sets that gained him a huge online following on YouTube in 2016, Marc officially began touring in 2019. His popularity continued to gain traction as he skyrocketed to viral fame in 2020 with his live quarantine sessions.
Since, Rebillet has fused his insightful perception on current events with his vulgar sense of humor and zero shame aura into his extraordinary musicianship. He vibes off the audiences’ energy while he masters his loop station, keyboards, voice, and percussion instruments to create straight BANGERS that range in style from house, funk, soul, hip-hop, trap music – you name it. It’s something completely genuine, makes you legit laugh out loud, ties in social commentary, and keeps you entertained and dancing the entire time. It’s different than anything else out there – and that’s why I fucking love it.
Once he made it to the stage from the stairs, he busted out some stretches before taking his place behind his bouncy-house surrounded DJ booth, immediately taking the most apparent topic to create the first hit of the night – “IT’S COLD!” Super fast BPM fused with weird ass noises from his synth and drum pad culminated as he professed “I’m cooooooold” before he suddenly halted all audio to exclaim “I’m the coldest,” as six smoke and pyro machines blasted off and we all raged into the fanatically frigid frenzy.
The usual comedic antics started early on, with Marc calling out to the fans he could see in the lower rows. Throughout the evening, he probably went on and off between the stage and the crowd about ten times, interacting with loyal attendees as he spotted them. Calling out to a young boy named Dax (sorry to Dax/Daxs’ parents for any misspellings!), a child who he definitely already knew, saying “Dax! I’m picking you up. HAHA! How you doing, my man?” “Good,” the cute boy replied. “Are you a little cold?” “…No.” The crowd erupts into awe.
He returned Dax back to his adults as he straddled the barrier back to the stage, exclaiming “God bless you, and god bless each and every dripping drop of wetness in this amphitheatre!” He then pointed to a woman dressed in a fuzzy pink flamingo robe, mustache, wig, and boxer briefs, “YOU! Come here. Come over here!” The guest (who was later coined Loop Mama by King Loop Daddy himself) excitedly obliged to the stage and immediately jumped onto one of the inflatable props.
“Loop Mama, what are we doing?” he asked. “Anything sexy, really,” Loop Mama replied, as the crowd cheers along in agreement – challenge accepted. “We need to dry them out. You guys are way too wet,” Loop Mama says, “Calm down, dry out.” Yes, yes, I love where this is going I thought. “That’s what we are going to do,” says Marc, “we are going to do something SO sexy, that it dries you out. That’s what anyone wants when they are thinking about something sexy. Dry me out daddy.”
Marc then proceeds to make a gorgeous, sexified and funky song based on this banter, completely halting midway and yelling at two more people in the crowd “You guys with the penises – come on! Get up here, you can do it!” He continues to invite fans to be a part of the spectacle, getting off the stage to retrieve them, with one person saying “I can’t, I am handicapped.” “I am SO sorry, I am so sorry. You will be on stage in spirit,” replies Marc, as the awesome lady gives him an inflatable penis and caps her mic time off with “Enjoy the Dick,” leaving everyone, including Marc, erupting in laughter.
So now there is a man dressed in a banana suit holding an inflatable dick, Loop Mama with another inflatable dick, and Marc, who is “telling [the penis] who’s boss”, as he violently slaps the inflatable dicks with his microphone, deflating one in the process. “So what do you guys say? SUCK! THAT! DICK!” as he gets the entire crowd to chant the phrase while layering it onto his dope ass “Dry Me Out” tune from earlier, adding onto it by singing into the mic “It’s so sexy that you’re dry and you’re soft.”
Served up next was another on the spot track that I am calling “Move Like That”, a full on dance anthem with a house-style back beat and epic drops that coincided with the most smoke I have ever seen on a stage. Enough smoke even, to allow a very sneaky fan to get onstage, appear next to Marc and ask him to do a beatbox, which Marc, both surprised and delighted, obliged into a wonderful beatbox ditty, before the man was escorted to leave by security. “What was I going to do? Not do it?” Marc laughs as the man exits.
As we got back to the show, the performance took on a more sincere tone, with the disco-studded Marc bopping into a beautiful melodic piano tune. As the alluring number ensued, an exquisite “Oooooooh” was belted into a mic that clearly was not Marc’s — to the crowds’ amazement, re-enter Emily King to the stage. Surprised, Marc gave his songstress pal a huge hug and declared “You know what that is? It’s that ‘cold’ love.” The two immediately began to play off one another, creating a song out of air about that “Teeth-chattering love…It’s going to bite you…’you-can-see-that-breath’ love…”.
Mmm, chill bumps on top of my chill bumps, absolutely stunning, and then to everyone’s delight, show opener Harry Mack also joined the fun. “It’s the coldest love, Red Rocks, it’s the coldest love,” before freestyling a freshly baked cold love loaf, pulling it out the oven piping hot for our auditory pleasure. Watch the video below to get the full effect.
In what has become commonplace for Rebillet’s live performances, he began asking fans to come onto the stage to get down with him. This time, it was for a very specific task – to put the huge inflatable ‘pawn’ into the equally huge inflatable ‘donut’s hole (yes, we are all as immature as it sounds). Eventually, about eight hand-picked individuals brought their sassy energy up to the stage, running through the bounce house and its’ props before successfully inserting the “P into the V”.
After The Penetration, Marc gave a quick lesson in sex education for ‘all the kids out there’: “This is how it works: You put the P in the V, and then it goes all the way through and falls out the other side. Then, it comes out the butt, and you put it back in again.”
Wow, better sex education than any of us got in an American public school, I’ll tell you what.
What followed was maybe one of my favorite installments of the show, with Marc reaching out to the fans way in the back rows of the venue while getting philosophical and quantum physics on us. Marc began talking about the intentional power of energy, and how humans can send and receive energy and love to each other, no matter where we all are. This statement turned into “Energy”, a ten-minute, bass-bumping song with layers of glitchy Moog synths, bass-y rumbles, guttural “Ooohs”, bittersweet keyboard riffs, and percussive sheets as the rain lightly cascaded over the almost 10,000 energetic beings synergizing together for one glorious night at one of the best places on earth.
As the set rounded out and neared the end, Marc brought us back to the real fucking awfulness happening in the world, calling out just some of the atrocities currently happening, stating that he couldn’t play this show without bringing awareness to the horridness out there. He then improvised a ballad dedicated to love, compassion and kindness, singing beautifully “Heartbroken, things are unrefined, but if every day we put a smile on someone’s face, baby, in your corner of the world, that will go a long way”, Mmm, mmm, good.
After his heartfelt call for more peace and love in the earthly lands, Marc took a minute or two to thank everyone wholeheartedly for being there. Somehow in the mix, one of the fans who had been called on stage during the P in the V scenario took the moment to gift Marc her insanely badass rainbow fur coat. He freaked out, gave her a hug, and donned the jacket over his disco-clad bodysuit and began asking people to shout if this was their “first show?” (the majority), “second?” third? (me) fourth? fifth? “Okay, we are really thinning out now,” he chuckled. “Well, if this is your first time, let me remind you that nothing has been prepared, nothing has been written. This is truly an improvised process with you all helping me create the show. But now, I am going to perform a ditty or two.”
He then asked the crowd which of his recorded songs they wanted to hear.
He ended up playing “Girls Club”, a hilariously incredible number from Loop Daddy III, released in 2020. The song is about a guy named Gary trying to get into an all girl’s club, eventually pointing to his premonition that there are a bunch of people having sex in there. “Gary, I am going to need you to stop looking for answers”, Marc sings. This is when the artists’ no-shame, sex-positive outcries really allow everyone to morph into the full, animalistic sexual beasts they are: “Let me in, I’m trying to fuuuuuuuuuck”, as the entire audience belts along with Rebillet, flailing and pulsating their bodies and hips to the undeniable and hysterical beat of looping moans.
Next up, he forced us all to “Go to sleep!” a.k.a. “Get the hell down to the ground”, before he woke us the fuck up with his “Your New Morning Alarm”, officially his number one streamed song on YouTube with 32 million views and counting. This 57-second song has also charted at number one on Billboard’s Dance/Electronic Digital Song Sales chart since its official debut on October 13th of this year.
The last song he played was a crowd and personal favorite, “I’m a Flamingo”, hence the amount of flamingo attire seen in the audience. This absolutely raunchy and weird as fuck satirical song is all from the perspective of a wild flamingo. A play on power and control, the flamingo is ‘going to rip out your child’s eyeballs, eat your grandmother’s vagina, eat a little human body snack, eat a nice faro salad in the greenroom for dinner, and then eat your sister, your brother’s sister, and your entire family tree”, because “I don’t give a fuck, I’m a flamingo, no rules here!”
And while the astonishing absurd content of the song may catch you off-guard and offend you at first, its satirical nature captures your attention and the production behind the lyrics encapsulates a head-banging, trap-style beat laced with hip-hop drums you cannot help but love.
The entire show, from the inimitable entry to the heartfelt sending of positive energy to the broken world to the shock factor of the “I’m A Flamingo” ending, it is safe to say that there has never been a performer quite like Marc Rebillet, and the world sure needs more of that untamed individuality in it. Thanks, Marc, for not being afraid to fully express yourself and for unabashedly sharing it with the universe.
