Nov 30, 2006

Arcade Fire-Vancouver 2005

I was reminiscing the other day and i wanted to share with you my experience of one of the greatest shows i ever witnessed. Don't get too excited, i don't have any recordings, my testimony is purely verbal. Just over a year ago, late September 2005, to be exact, i attended the Austin City Limits Music Festival, which was enormous fun, topped off by seeing on the sunday afternoon, The Arcade Fire, The Decemberists and Wilco in succession, bliss indeed. Then about 2 weeks later i was in Vancouver and was lucky enough to see The Arcade Fire headline a show on a friday night at the PNE Forum, which holds about 4000 people and i believe is an old hockey rink. The show was sold out and was one of the band's last shows of a huge 2005. To say the supports were great is an understatement, Belle Orchestre, opened and set the scene with their beautiful orchestral music, i even had the pleasure of saying hello to Richard Parry at the t-shirt stand after the show. Then Wolf Parade were next, after a slow start, they tore the place apart. When they played "I'll Believe In Anything", first time i had heard it, i knew i was witnessing something special. Then Arcade Fire, took the stage, and they were stupendous, they played with enormous passion and the crowd just lapped it up. They covered Springsteen's "Highway Patrolman" along the way and returned to play "Wake Up" as the encore. That is when all 3 bands joined each other on stage for the finale, as you can see in my photo, excuse the quality, i was in a heaving mass of humanity. To top things off the makers of Funeral then picked up all instruments acoustic and started to play "Age of Consent" by New Order, whilst walking deep into the audience, settling at the back of the crowd and then took on "Kiss Off" by the Violent Femmes. It was certainly a night that will live long in my memory.

3 Comments:

  • At December 01, 2006 , Blogger a camera in the crowd said...

    I was at ACL last year, but only on Sunday! Arcade Fire was indeed brilliant and fun, and so was Rilo Kiley and that was the day I fell in love with The Decemberists. Coldplay was actually pretty entertaining too.

    So neat you came all the way to Austin!

     
  • At December 01, 2006 , Anonymous Anonymous said...

    their show in vancouver in 2004 was one of the best concerts i've ever seen. sadly i had moved here shortly before this show.

     
  • At December 01, 2006 , Blogger Wayne Massingham said...

    i definitely will return to austin one day, great city and the people were so friendly- would have loved to go this year- explosions in the sky were apparently life-altering

    sean - from what i've heard they dont know how to put on a bad show, can't wait for something new

     

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