Diplo w/ JPAN & LP Giobbi• Ogden Twilight •September 16, 2022• Ogden Amphitheater
Reviewed and Photographed by Eli Valle
Unless you are a mega fan, odds are you don’t know Thomas Wesley Pentz as Thomas Wesley Pentz. However, you may have better odds of knowing his stage name, Diplo. If you go through past lineups, you will notice that Diplo is no stranger to the Twilight Concert Series. On September 16th at the Ogden Amphitheater, he made his official return to the tradition. LP Giobbi and JPAN were the night’s special guests. Just like Diplo, they too received an enthusiastic welcome full of cheers from the audience.
JPAN
JPAN is a DJ you can find in Utah locally who is starting to gain the well deserved traction he deserves. Opening up a show is never easy but he did it with such a big grin that anyone could see once you directed your attention to the stage. His outfit did not disappoint either. It was right on time for the initiation of the spooky season. He wore small, round dark glasses, a tan Bruno Mars type of hat, and a blue short sleeved button up with orange jack-o-lanterns all over. Spooky season or not, DJ JPAN was ready to get down with Odgen.
No crowd is ever too small. And the people at the center front made sure to show everyone how to party. It is pretty hard to sit or stand still when you have house beats playing at full volume. So I do not blame them at all. Next time you are in the mood to bust a move in SLC, check to see where DJ JPAN is going to be. He is worth checking out!
LP Giobbi
There is that small but wonderful period of time in every day that can be found between the sunset and dusk. It’s the moment when the sun is still barely out but the darkness has begun creeping in and it’s a little harder to see without some sort of light. There is no better moment than that one for a concert to begin. That was when LP Giobbi took her turn on stage. The moment she began playing, she had a twinkle in her eye that matched all of her happy beats. People rallied and danced with her as her visuals displayed LP Giobbi in bold letters in front of what was a pixie-like forest background that you could find on the Fairy’s Forest video game.
Autumn began making its “I am here!” announcement to the concertgoers . Everyone felt a cool breeze throughout the night as the temperatures began to drop well into the low 70s. If you have spent any increment of time in Utah this 2022 summer, you know that this is a major change in the weather.
Diplo
Now it is time for the man of the hour, the night’s headliner. Diplo seems to be a Utah favorite. Any time he comes to the area, the audience never fails to give him love. Friday night was no different. The crowd continued to wait patiently as the sun had completely gone down for the day. It was a little past 9:30 pm. Diplo quickly found his groove and brought the heat directly from Las Vegas as soon as he hit the stage. Suddenly, the chilly winds that were starting to pick up were now the least of everyone’s concerns. The night truly began for his fanbase that he sometimes lovingly calls “Dipping Dots”.
Here is the thing about any Diplo set, it is fair to say that you should always expect two things. The first one is to expect some sort of sweat rolling off your body. Because odds are you are going to be dancing hard enough to sweat or the person next to you is just as sweaty if not more sweaty than you. The second thing to expect at a Diplo concert is that there will be a great performance full of lasers, spray smoke, flashing lights, confetti, and his dinosaur logo, the Diplodocus. And he did that with the help of the production crew. His shows tend to bring in a large range of people. At the front of the barricade and to the very back of the bleachers, you saw people of all shapes and sizes.
The diversity of his shows is consistently present and the fashion trends were all over the place. All the way to the left and all the way to the right, you could see people dressed in bright colors and glitter. You could also see people in a simple pair of jeans and a plain black top. You could spot toddlers wearing giant ear muffs to protect their little ears as well as teens, middle aged adults. There was even a lady who was celebrating her 65th birthday (true story, she had a button). There is no set demographic for any EDM show and Diplo’s crowd never fails to remind us of that.
Mr. Pentz moved along with Ogden as he played his originals and mixes of some major chart hits. Including his popular 2019 collab with SIDEPIECE, ‘On My Mind’, ‘Turn Back Time’ with Sonny Fodera, and ‘In Da Ghetto’ by J Balvin and Skrillex. With every new song transition, you could feel all the positive vibes that were radiating all throughout the amphitheater. The energy and show kept going past curfew. At 11:00 PM the show finally came to a halt when it was originally set to end at 10:40 PM. What can we say, Utah sure does love Diplo.
His closing song of the set was Ben E. King’s ‘Stand By Me’ which quite honestly was a surprise but a pleasant way to wrap up the night. He asked everyone to sing along to it and people began to sway to the beat as they yelled out the lyrics. On the final notes of the song, Diplo wished everyone a good night and with that ecstatic show, he concluded Ogden Twilight’s third to last concert of the season.
