Arcade Fire at the Shoreline!
Aug. 1st, 2014 06:08![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
starladyI drove down with my friend J to see Arcade Fire at the Shoreline Ampitheater in Mountain View Wednesday night. Arcade Fire were amazing, as usual! They are one of my all-time favorite bands and they never disappoint, of course.
I actually listened to their March 08 concert in Minneapolis while I was studying for orals, and so I was surprised, upon comparing the setlist from that show with the setlist from the show I saw (note: the latter doesn't mention which song they launched into a few bars of New Order's "Temptation") to see that they were quite similar; it felt like our show had fewer songs from Reflektor, but it actually didn't. Compared to the last time I saw them in a comparable venue at the Mann Center in Philly, though (2 August 2010), they did play fewer songs from the new album. But, given that they now have more albums…I don't know. It was awesome all the same, and thanks to the presale code I used we got quite decent seats for less money than might otherwise have been expected. I was glad they did "Normal Person," because that's one of my favorites on the new album, and the split stage with Regine and Win was great on "It's Never Over," and I personally thought the fake band bit with "Tunnel of Love" was hilarious. Win opened "Joan of Arc" by shouting "Dear god, give us a female president," which was also pretty great. The crowd was decent too! The seats were close to sold out, and the lawn was pretty full, and people were, for the Bay Area, pretty into it--they stood up as soon as the band came out and for the most part didn't sit down again, although they did as usual smoke a ton of pot and often stood there like lumps. Sigh. They were better than when I saw Arcade Fire in Berkeley, anyway, though not as good as Philly or Tokyo; I think the band request to come in party clothes or costume helped get people into it.
The Shoreline is decent too; it's pretty comparable to the Mann Center honestly, though with less ease of access to major roads, and frankly, the damn South Bay is just so far away. We missed Dan Deacon entirely because of traffic, which I was a little sad about because he is awesome. In short, I will continue to regard the Shoreline as a venue to go to only if the artist playing there is someone I 200% want to see.
I actually listened to their March 08 concert in Minneapolis while I was studying for orals, and so I was surprised, upon comparing the setlist from that show with the setlist from the show I saw (note: the latter doesn't mention which song they launched into a few bars of New Order's "Temptation") to see that they were quite similar; it felt like our show had fewer songs from Reflektor, but it actually didn't. Compared to the last time I saw them in a comparable venue at the Mann Center in Philly, though (2 August 2010), they did play fewer songs from the new album. But, given that they now have more albums…I don't know. It was awesome all the same, and thanks to the presale code I used we got quite decent seats for less money than might otherwise have been expected. I was glad they did "Normal Person," because that's one of my favorites on the new album, and the split stage with Regine and Win was great on "It's Never Over," and I personally thought the fake band bit with "Tunnel of Love" was hilarious. Win opened "Joan of Arc" by shouting "Dear god, give us a female president," which was also pretty great. The crowd was decent too! The seats were close to sold out, and the lawn was pretty full, and people were, for the Bay Area, pretty into it--they stood up as soon as the band came out and for the most part didn't sit down again, although they did as usual smoke a ton of pot and often stood there like lumps. Sigh. They were better than when I saw Arcade Fire in Berkeley, anyway, though not as good as Philly or Tokyo; I think the band request to come in party clothes or costume helped get people into it.
The Shoreline is decent too; it's pretty comparable to the Mann Center honestly, though with less ease of access to major roads, and frankly, the damn South Bay is just so far away. We missed Dan Deacon entirely because of traffic, which I was a little sad about because he is awesome. In short, I will continue to regard the Shoreline as a venue to go to only if the artist playing there is someone I 200% want to see.