Arcade Fire @ Radio City Music Hall: City on Fire

Please don't go Arcade Fire, stay a while. Three days is not enough to enjoy New York City. Oh well, the music makers of Montreal are done their three night stand in NYC, so they must move on. We must move on as well.

Fourth time around with these cats and every show is a different experience. First, the Summer Stage show that had David Bowie come out for a few tunes -- that was pure insanity at its finest. Bowie was there, but not on stage this time. Then the small shows at Judson Memorial Church had a wow factor of 11 out of 10. Third, the insane rush of bring upfront last Saturday could not be beat. Tonight, with my trusty photo pass, I got that same feeling of having the band bust out the best music that any band is making right now in your face. Alas, afterwords I retreated to my true seat, 2 rows ... from the back. It was just me and some dude from Saturday Night Live sucking face with his girly-girl (I had to look up his name, Bill Hader)

Obviously, it's a totally different experience, but still worth the price of admission. As you can tell by the setlist, they rearrange it a bit from Saturday and added some old favorites.

• Keep the Car Running
• No Cars Go
• Haiti
• Black Mirror
• Laika
• In the Backseat
• My Body is a Cage
• Ocean of Noise
• Tunnels
• The Well & the Lighthouse
• Antichrist Television Blues
• Power Out
• Rebellion
• Encore: Intervention
• Wake Up

The ending with Wake Up just about made the night for me. Everyone went nuts at end with the famous key/tempo/style change towards the end. I think the whole crowd woke up when "Tunnels" was inserted into the mix. Before that, it was just a steady hum of energy, then blammo. It's a rock concert.

I think if you ask anybody what they though of tonight, their first thought will be "fucking unreal, man." Then after that, people, myself included, will complain that security put the smack down on anybody out of their seat. Senor Butler asked if people could come up front, which sent people to the aisle only to be man handled by security. I saw a a handful of people being dragged out forcefully. Yes, it's sucks for them. Win came out of the encore and said in a sarcastic tone, "I know, security. I'm sorry. I'm a bad boy." I'm sure the conversation went something like this:

Arcade Fire Manager: "They told me to tell you not to encourage people to come up front."

Win: "Nuts"

Instead, Butler and his brother made their way through the crowd. It was the most rock star thing that I'm seen Win do. He took a microphone and just went into the middle of the crowd for Rebellion. Meanwhile, all sorts of lighted cocktail stray were being thrown about. It was a surreal cool sight of lighted objects being thrown all over the place. Them another wicked moment, when the whole crowd continued "ooooo oooing" the ending to Rebellion until the band came out for the encore,.

That's all I have thoughts wise, you kind of run out of things to stay after third time in 3 months. Huzzah! The pictures: I got the hook-up on a decent lens, and I'm loving the results. Let me know what you think.

Comments

[kathryn]

I'm curious -- did they grant you a photo pass purely for your blog, or were you shooting for some other publication?

I would be using a faster shutter speed judging from your EXIF data. 1/125 or faster will help freeze motion on stage. Also, I'd run those through Noise Ninja or something since you're at 1600 ISO.

[Oliver Lopena]

Props, man... I didn't even consider asking for a photo pass for this show. You rock.

The show was just as amazing from the 2nd mez :)

[Bianca]

Show was EXCELLENT! My second time seeing them. I was about 20 rows back. Perfect view of everything.

Neighborhood (Tunnels) was the definite highlight for me :)

[bumpershine]

I like her short shorts.