Dakaboom provides crude humor at the Dock

Dakaboom members Paul Peglar and Ben McClain perform Friday night at the Loading Dock in the Memorial Union. Photo by Jennifer Friese/The Dakota Student.

The Loading Dock was thriving with flashing lights and music on Friday night just before comedic musicians, Paul Peglar and Ben McClain, of Dakaboom arrived on stage and took over the crowd.

The duo delivered a modern form of vaudeville, a type of entertainment popular in the early 20th century, featuring a mixture of specialty acts such as burlesque comedy and song and dance. They also included piano and beatboxing into their hilarious performance.

Their show consisted of many songs including “Friend Like Me” which detailed their talents to the audience from a simple beatboxing rhythm to opera singing to an even more complex beatboxing rhythm.

“Dakaboom FAQ” featured them answering questions about each other like how they met in high school, what their influences are and how Dakaboom came from the rhythm chant their ballet teacher used in theatre school.

In “Cheesy Love Song” Paul talked about a girl and how his life changed because of it, using different types of cheese in the song as puns.

Some of their humor was crude to an extent, even borderline creepy, but overall I liked them.

They did embarrass a few people with their jokes, but my favorite part was definitely where Paul left the audience for a short break and Ben created various beatboxing and drum sounds, looped them, then created a song where he imitated a bat and talked about being blind and using echolocation as a means of navigation.

Dakaboom has toured all over the country with well over 100 performances per year at different colleges and have released their first studio album, “Get Awesome” in 2012.

I would highly recommend Dakaboom to anyone who is fascinated to a different approach to music and to anyone who enjoys a good laugh.

I would give their performance a five out of fives stars for the simple fact that I enjoy different types of music, and their comedy routine and beatboxing talent were amazing.

Colin Johnson is a staff writer for The Dakota Student. He can be reached at [email protected].