Arcade Fire Me

Good Morning 6:30am... rise and shine for your 8am exam. Then enjoy your hour and a half soccer class... (actually today we got to play rugby for warm up and then 9 a side soccer for the rest of the class... rugby was pathetic since my team decided that since we couldn't pass forward we weren't going to move forward either - I was that annoying guy yelling at everyone to move forward with the ball - not that I know squat about Rugby... but I know if you just keep throwing it backwards you are going to throw it over your own goal line............!) So we eventually got warmed up and then we played the soccer and our side won 2-1. Goals were scored based on crosses in. You couldn't score unless the ball was crossed in. I scored the first goal on a great cross from one of the Pandas (Claire) and I finished it with a header.

Skip forward to me going to the gym after exam, then running. Got home from school and gym and proceeded to do some first of the month grocery shopping with Mr.Steve. Got home just in time for biomechanics class which saddly I continue to think I understand some of it but feel like the guy that got left without the punchline.

Fast forward to the concert. Steve insisted on being there early. I was ten minutes off schedule and he got very pissy and drove like a maniac (for him anyway). We got there and the line didn't move for 40 minutes regardless. I would've had to likely skip class to get there in time to be first or third in line to get fun seats. He decided shortly thereafter that we didn't want seats anyway since all the areas with seats were for minors only and no beer was allowed.

Fast forward again to the opening bands. Both were actually very good but I was fairly burnt out from the early exam and soccer and gym and grocery shopping, etc. We ran into my team mate Beth and she professed her love for the Arcade Fire. This will come into play later.

Wolf Parade was pretty damn good. Alas i didn't know any of their songs and so I was fading fast. After their set finally finished, the roadies went on a tuning spree and I thought I was going to fall asleep on my feet. The Arcade Fire finally hit the stage and most of the songs were familiar and groovible. I was still fading in and out. I think in having this experience of going to all the concerts with Steve I have realized that to go to a live show I absolutely need to want to be there. My attention deficit kicks in when I don't know the words and stuff. I was wavering in and out of the concert. I enjoyed the parts I knew immensely but was quite shut out on the songs I didn't know. It wasn't until the encore that I pepped up. The song was actually about a dog the Russians sent into space (Laika I think) to see what would happen. He ended up dying and I thought that was pretty crap since I think any animals being tortured or hurt or whatever is pathetically cruel. Anyway... the song idea depressed me but then there is apparently a happy turn to the lyrics, or at least a very passionate one... I saw a girl in the crowd dead on to the beat and the feeling with her hands and arms ( couldn't see the rest of her) but it was pretty passionate the way the arms were moving to the song. It welcomed me back to the concert.

In any case - I still decided to run off to coat check to grab our stuff before the crowds. Turns out I had the right idea as the band left stage to tour up through Reds and into the coat check area. I was waiting for Steve when the band came up into the area. I thought I had one upped Steve but he was pretty much the 7th person through the curtain after the band. He decided my move towards beating the crowd was the right one and he followed the band on its way up. We all watched them play from a few yards away which was really cool. The best thing about it was that my team mate Beth was just about right there with us loving it up. Turns out her appreciation of The Arcade Fire runs true and deep. It lifted me up again to watch her enjoy the intimate finale.

Steve tells me that the concert eclipsed both the U2 concerts we saw this summer. That tells you something!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!