Headlights Look Like Diamonds, Hec Ed Does Not Look Like a Music Venue
Last night's Arcade Fire show was rife with problems. Not with the Arcade Fire, Lord knows they can do no wrong, but with the opening bands, and most of all, with the venue. Somehow, even though the scheduled time for the show was 7:30pm, the time published everywhere---on the Ticketmaster site, in ads for the show, in UW emails, on the goddamn tickets---doors actually opened at 6:30pm and the Gossip started playing right around 7. This would explain why no one was there for their set.
And then there was the issue of wristbands. Apparently, despite everyone having general admission tickets, to get on the floor, you needed to have a wristband, and to have a wristband, you needed to have gotten there early. Once again, something that no one thought fit to inform the masses before they arrived at the show, leading one girl to angrily argue with a security guard, "What part of G-fucking-A do you not understand?" If only there were some medium where information was easily accessible, some sort of site that was a part of an information web where one could go to look up info like set times or venue policies, or perhaps a mailing system that would allow such information to travel instantaneously through tubes....
But we digress. We showed up in time to catch most of LCD Soundsystem's set. It takes a particularly poor venue to suck all the energy out of the pulsations of James Murphy and his band, and unfortunately Hec Ed was that venue. We've seen LCD Soundsystem play at the Showbox and people have lost their shit; Murphy knows how to turn a crowd into a writhing mass of sweaty bodies. Last night, however, we saw some bobbing and mild dancing in the crowd, but no massive dance freak-outs. Part of the problem was terrible acoustics: We could see the Soundsystem's energy on stage, but as soon as the music hit the air, the energy instantly dissipated, leaving his driving beats hollow and his often-witty lyrics completely indecipherable. What didn't help was the setlist (see below).
As for Arcade Fire, of course they were wonderful. Their set was pretty much identical to the one from Sasquatch this summer, but we didn't mind. We're always glad to take in one of their performances, just to experience the band's overwhelming talent and emotional content, always complemented by their huge theatrical stage show. They played most of Neon Bible, as well as all the big songs from Funeral ("Rebellion (Lies)," "Neighborhoods 1, 2, 3") before closing their encore with what used to be their opener "Wake Up." Arcade Fire are, without a doubt, one of the most important bands making music today. We will go to the ends of the earth to see them play, as evidenced by our willingness to see them at a terribly organized show in a truly shitty venue.
But we weren't the only member of Seattlest present at last night's show. Comments from the peanut gallery after the jump.
Courtney: LCD Soundsystem, we love you, but you brought us down. There were many things outside James Murphy’s control at the show last night: the crappy Hec Ed venue, that whole wristband debacle, the mysterious 7:30 doortime published despite the Gossip starting at 7pm, perhaps even a limited audio and light budget. But there was one thing squarely in his control that we wished he’d dealt with differently--the setlist. After we’d figured out that the band that took the stage at 8:00pm was not the Gossip, we were at least psyched we’d catch the whole LCD show. He led in with something from the new album, we’re pretty sure it was "Us V Them." A good start, loud as hell with the bass making our ribcage vibrate along. And then, second song was a sped-up, almost angry version of "Daft Punk Is Playing At My House." Dammit. We were expecting a show full of lush LCD songs that rise up to that one, then drop us back down and build up again to finish on a high note. Instead he ran through the gamut of the new album, playing remarkably literal versions that fell flat just after they floated off the stage—Hec Ed is hell for sound engineers. The finish was "New York...", admittedly one of our favorites on the new CD for its sweet, awkwardly endearing honesty. It reaches out and grabs you at the end of the disc and makes you want to play the whole thing over again. But it is not the song to end your set on; we’d much have preferred "All My Friends" to carry the buzz through the painfully long changeover to the Arcade Fire set.
Matt Silvie: The show last night was a different animal from the Paramount show the Arcade Fire played a few years back, neither better or worse, just different. I'm kinda glad they didn't do that thing they did at the end of the last one where they went off through the crowd doing the marching band stuff. That was good for one time only. Like the last one, the live show improves on the music significantly and exposes the true epic proportions of their sound, something that you just don't get listening to them in your home or even in your car. Like the effect the last show had on the previous album, this show will expand and fundamentally change how I listen to Neon Bible in the future.
Also: When Win Butler said that thing about being at the "Seattle video arcade" and "No Cars Go" was playing and the fat man wouldn't let him play the car game, my spidey sense got a-tinglin'. I suspect he made up that story and modifies it to "[your city's] video arcade" as suits his needs. At least that's what I would do.
"AF Shadows" care of sprizee, plucked from the Seattlest Photo Pool.
