GIG NUMBER NINETY-SEVEN
Who
As the day drew near I knew I'd prepared like never before and I felt massively up for it. I'd also seen Euros Childs earlier in the week so it was an exciting time for me. I had half a day off work so I could arrive by train in good time and the only complaint was a shock bout of hail in Wolverhampton. I pulled into Manchester with plenty of time to spare so decided to embark on a Super Nostalgic Mega Walk all the way to our meeting place in Fallowfield, listening to Arcade Fire until my walkman batteries ran out. The Arndale Centre had finally been finished and Owens Park Tower was still standing, but generally things were as I'd expected, and I'd timed the walk very nicely. It was a great way to pass the time but I couldn't help but feel my feet would not recover for tonight after an hours walking. I met Jon, dropped off my stuff, and we went to a local chippy. There were about five of us going, including one other old work colleague, someone else I'd met before and someone I hadn't. It was most definitely a never to be repeated crew of people, three with standing tickets and two with seated! We were given a lift into town and arrived before 8pm, which was alright but if it were up to me I'd had gone out an hour earlier. As predicted there were tons of touts outside the Apollo, and I always resent travelling into such a dodgy part of Manchester. We didn't have to wait long to get in and just like at Birmingham Academy the tickets were now bar-coded. We checked out the T-shirt stall and joked about going to see Jason Donovan play. I was now going to tell you how we would tackle the problem of getting five people into the stalls with only three standing tickets but I may compromise others trying the same thing so I won't say. Suffice to say we managed it and were very pleased with ourselves and I was particularly relieved, as I was rather worried about it. In fact they didn't even tear the stub off our tickets, which is unusual.
It was an interesting mix of young and old and despite the fact that tickets for tonight were like gold dust an alarming number of people were happy to stand at the back not seeing anything. Unfortunately for me we were amongst them and despite my efforts there was no interest in moving forwards a bit to obtain a proper view. This turned out to be a major downer on our enjoyment but I wasn't in the mood to skank everyone and also got to enjoy two pints, neither of which I had to queue for myself. Despite being a sell-out the venue was totally uncramped, which is strange, and we also had an OK view due to the sloping floor, even if we were too far away. I chatted about Brian Wilson with Phil before support act Patrick Wolf took to the stage. He was a very skinny guy wearing shorts (which I briefly thought to be a dress) who I'd expected to be loud and crazy but he turned out to be a bit boring, albeit slightly tuneful. He kept mumbling stuff at us, was playing a violin at times and, in the nadir of his show, was rolling around manically on the floor to a decidedly mid-tempo song. By the end I have no idea if I was pleasantly surprised or not. He certainly wasn't awful, but at the same time wasn't very exciting either, but he played a pretty nice song towards the end to earn a very mild thumbs up. The stage was now being set up for Arcade Fire and things were getting exciting, even if we were standing too far back to enjoy any atmosphere. They came onstage to No Cars Go and it felt slightly muted and didn't explode like I'd hoped. Despite being an old song nobody seemed to know it, and I'm very disappointed with the crowd for that. Admittedly I didn't know anything when I'd got tickets but at least I'd made the effort to learn everything since! However, the applause was quite strong and I was singing along, doing my very best to get into everything, and although I didn't know it at the time I was making a deeper connection with the songs I was hearing.
Arcade Fire are a ten-piece live band and as such are able to generate quite a wall of sound, even if the mediocre sound quality at the start offset much of it. They had a large screen, featuring mostly the cover of Neon Bible, plus some glowing stands and lots of little screens. The band kept swapping places throughout the evening and, even though he didn't always get the prominent position, it's obvious that Win Butler was the main man. Coolest instrument onstage was definitely the giant organ, and I have no doubt they were giving us value for money at least from a technical point of view, nicely getting away with having no gimmicks! No Cars Go was followed with Black Mirror and Keep The Car Running and the story was the same. Both were having an effect on me, which was too subtle for me to feel at the time, but on the surface I was trying my best to get into the tunes, countering the poor atmosphere and our bad position. This was one of the worst crowds ever as everybody seemed to be talking continuously rather than LISTENING, nobody seemed to know the new songs and, despite the sloping venue, a guy with a massive head was still blocking my view! This was deeply frustrating - had the casual fans got all the tickets, or are there really so few people who knew Arcade Fire properly? Even the band seemed very forced in their praising of the crowd. Or was it all because I was too far back? I'm very proud to say I knew every song that was played but as nobody else did it seemed everything was to depend on the old tunes livening the place up. The new songs continued with the so-so Neon Bible before the lovely Black Wave/Bad Vibrations, which has since gone on to become one of my favourites. On the night though it all seemed a bit too muddy and bleak for me. The band could had made things better for everyone by mixing in the old songs but they doggedly got on with ramming the new songs down our throats and, good as they are, no band can win over an audience by doing it. Jon had said there'd be a moshpit but even down the front it looked a bit too quiet for comfort, despite the fact that the band were quite enthusiastic along with the light show.
Haiti was the first song played from Funeral but I didn't realise it was an oldie and judging from the crowd reaction nobody else seemed to treat it any differently. Windowsill and The Well And The Lighthouse took us back to Neon Bible yet again and as nice as they are the balance was just becoming hopelessly skewed. Crown Of Love was quite nice and featured a guy in the band making gestures to the air and got energy levels up for Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels). Finally everybody stopped talking and paid attention, and the emotional intensity of the opening lines will be with me forever. They'd left it much too late but all the difficulties melted away and it was this glorious moment that lived with me afterwards, and led to my next gig and a total change in my perception. Ocean Of Noise was nice but yet again dragged us back into new material territory so the crowd were just treading water until Rebellion (Lies), which led to the strongest singing and clapping so far from everybody in the audience. This was followed by Intervention - at the time my favourite Neon Bible track - but I was starting to think that the new songs had all sounded better on record then in front of an ignorant crowd. The band left the stage and then returned in record time to hopefully deliver the rest of the oldies. (Antichrist Television Blues) however was surely on nobody's checklist of "songs I'd desperately like to hear" so it was with a sense of frustration that I saw the band leave the stage AGAIN straight after. Phil joked that the first member was back onstage before the last one had left and it was almost true. The "token encore" is a strange ritual, and little is gained by the band leaving the stage for a couple of minutes when there is no doubt they'll come back. It seemed that Arcade Fire were almost determined to destroy any momentum with all these new songs but it was the impact of Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels) and the next song that stayed in my mind and may even have changed my life. Wake Up was the most euphoric live moment I'd experienced for a long time, as the lights were raised and we screamed along in unison with the entire band. This song was worth the price of admission alone. The whole crowd gave some fitting applause and then, implausibly, the band left the stage again! It was only 10:30pm.
I sensed a ripple of confusion as the lights then went up. There was one more song everybody in the room wanted to hear and 30 minutes of time for it to be played in. But it seems the band couldn't be bothered to finish things properly and that was it. Everybody walked outside in shock, the atmosphere being ruined yet again after Wake Up had taken it into the stratosphere. I couldn't believe it, and if I had been standing in the moshpit like I'd had wanted I think this disappointment would have been even more crushing. Obviously I'm talking about Neighborhood #3, the song that had single-handedly made me a fan and in fact the only one I knew before I'd got a ticket. A band who have only had two albums are demonstrating inhuman arrogance to miss out such a popular tune and, to make things even worse, they had played it the previous night in Manchester. One of my old workmates had attended both nights, and I was wishing I'd done the same thing now. I'm writing this review two months later and my opinion has been reappraised since, but at the time all I felt was utter disgust and that I'd been cheated. People like me had travelled miles to see them and there are only a handful of songs we demand to hear. I was shocked to read some online reviews afterwards, and the blind devotion showed by some fans who were not affronted by this omission. Other than this disappointment, I was too far back, the crowd were very poor (worst Manchester crowd ever), sound quality was weak in parts and the ordering of the setlist seemed to be going out of its way to destroy its own momentum. And if I had gone to the previous evening I may have been almost as frustrated, as they didn't play Wake Up then! Afterwards I felt much more negative about the show than everyone else but we had a pretty good evening, as I finally went somewhere where they served Leffe in pints, then I had a lift back and we enjoyed a totally unnecessary Chinese takeaway and Ricky Gervais DVD.
On the next day the show was almost totally out of my mind and I was in denial that I had travelled all this way and they hadn't played my favourite song. I couldn't bear to think about it and even two months later I could barely stand to hear Power Out due to the sense of disappointment it brings on. Arcade Fire had toured when Funeral had came out but had stopped the second it had become popular so everybody wanted to hear the old songs rather than every single track on Neon Bible (except My Body Is A Cage which wasn't played). It certainly punctures this idea of them being a band of the people. We had a nice meal the next day in a pub I hadn't been to for ages and I returned home, missing my train by a few minutes. And this is where the story gets interesting. I have noticed that my immediate versus long-term opinions of a gig can wildly differ. This show I had known every song, had tried to hard to enjoy myself and had been up for it. But I came out feeling cheated due to one omission and the other flaws I've covered. I then went through a day or two of not thinking about it at all. Then something changed. I started listening to Wake Up. I started listening to Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels). They were etched into my soul. I remembered how amazing they had been, and my feelings about the rest of the set were brushed aside. I had been promised that Arcade Fire are even better than The Flaming Lips live and had rubbished that suggestion. I still say they can't compare. With all my ambivalent feelings I've settled on an 8/10 mark. In some ways it was 10/10, in other ways, particularly in my immediate feelings, it was the biggest disappointment ever. But in six days time a profound switch had taken place in my mind, the seeds of obsession were sewn, and you'll never guess which band I went to see live!
Mark: 8.0/10
Arcade Fire
Support
Patrick Wolf
Where
Manchester Apollo
When
9th March 2007
Price
£17.00
Who with
Jon and friends
Position
Towards the back
Comments
Before getting tickets to this show I had next to no knowledge of the band beyond the brilliance of Neighborhood #3 (Power Out). Now here I am writing the review two months after the show and my appraisal of both the band and this night has changed several times over, making this a very difficult review to write. Upon getting tickets to see Euros Childs in Wolverhampton and later being disappointed to find Gruff Rhys had gone and scheduled a show in Birmingham on the same night, I did consider a trip up to Manchester to see Gruff. As none of my Manchester friends were fussed this plan never got off the drawing board but it was the catalyst for my suggesting I come up to see Arcade Fire. Jon agreed immediately, being a massive fan, and I both welcomed a nice weekend away and the chance to see such a well-regarded act. We agreed to both try and get tickets for the second night that the band were in town (the Friday) and I succeeded on my second attempt to obtain a standing ticket. I thought this would have been easy for everyone but Jon could only get seated. A potential disaster loomed! Tickets cost a hefty £17 including, unusually, a £1 charity donation, but with the levels of hype surrounding the band they could have sold the show out many times over. I now turned my attention to becoming a proper fan and purchased both the debut album and the Arcade Fire E.P. I heard them many many times over until all the songs sunk in, but admittedly it was an unnatural process and I didn't become a massive fan at first. I reasoned that seeing them live would convert me fully and that knowing all the songs would be the best grounding to enjoy them live. I also heard Neon Bible from NME.com numerous times and got to know it just as well as Funeral.
Setlist
No Cars Go
Black Mirror
Keep The Car Running
Neon Bible
Black Wave/Bad Vibrations
Haiti
Windowsill
The Well And The Lighthouse
Crown Of Love
Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)
Ocean Of Noise
Rebellion (Lies)
Intervention
(Antichrist Television Blues)
Wake Up
