Friday, February 17, 2006

WARNING: MASSIVE FRANZ FERDINAND RAVING.
Turn away if you're sick of this already.


O curse my short term memory!

The FF concert was shit-awesome of course, all worries about lacklustre live-audio flying out of the window since the sound was so clear and tight in tune and pitch that you'd think it was a recording, save for the fact that alex kapranos missed a couple of lyrics which in the grand scale of things, everybody who was there says - WHO CARES.

Right, back to the short term memory point. Too quickly too quickly the experience is fading for my memory like the bruises on my knee and hips. All I have in my head are quick flashes of bright lights, alex being a complete and lovable slut *FANGIRL*, nick and his guitar with the broken string swinging about, and for one of the songs zomg they had three people on the drums, and the quiet bassist who tash and i tried to wave to just to I don't know, so he'd be more cheerier somehow, so before all of this fades from my old brain:

PLEASE PEOPLE WHO ARE MY FRIENDS AND TOOK PHOTOS THEN, SEND THEM TO ME! SOON!
This means dhaniah/shila, jenn and your friend yvette (ask her to add me on msn, yes?), jaaanice and pam goh, although i suppose she doesn't even read this blog.

At one point, alex was standing on the drums and I thought woah, is he going to jump off then he uh, kind of nimbly hopped off and i was like, eh?

But the white light that made them look like angels and then turning blood red when they played This Fire, the way they sauntered out knowing, like tash said, that they didn't need a opening act or even massive dramatic shindig to work the crowd. When they played the first few bars of crowd-pleaser songs (which is almost everthing, basically) and the crowd just surges and the atmosphere was just there and zomg, alex really knew how to work the crowd with his sneaky, flirty furtive looks and uh, tight pants. or when the atmosphere is just SO up there and nick just kills you with the slick guitar and he plays with this pale and feverish gleam, or paul i think is standing hitting the bass drums pounding out a steady beat for us to cheer the band back out from their short breather and breaking out into Your Diary.

(paragraph break!)

how alex spoke with a funny elvis-accent, which is supremely odd for a scottish man and by general consensus, nobody understood but it was funny and they were having fun so again, nobpdy cares. oh oh and when they did those guitar jumps, or when people were jumping in the mosh pit and you jump along and it's like you're being carried by a giant organism IT IS SO WEIRD. oh oh and they played all the songs I wanted to hear by the first half and could die happy already because you could tell they were all really into it, and not just playing for a bunch of fans from a tiny speck of an island. hand punching and pointing in unision, screaming the words to the songs but you can't hear yourself anyway and then falling into captive silence when the song falls into a slow and soft catch and you can just see everybody watching the single notes and syllables flowing from the band like spheres of sound. Oh the bridge for Walk Away and That Was Easy were like that.

(oh come on, I must remember more than this!)

Hm, at some point in between songs, alex mentioned something about 'stirrings in his nether-regions'. I'm pretty sure I didn't imagine that, really! And for the love of everything in a flowery shirt and striped pants, I can't remember what led him to say that, or what he said afterwards.

I love that they made theatrical stage bows that were dignified in their own way, and did not smash one guitar at all throughout the whole thing because I honestly don't understand how musicians can bear to do that. Even though this entire entry quite shows that I have massive leanings towards Alex Kapranos fangirlhood, you know, we really were all there for the music.

Which was brilliant, and I don't think anything in 2006 can top that sweaty and cramped hour and half being hardly a meter away from FF although I would very much like to beg the Powers That Be to try, because man! If the peak of this year is in February, what does that say about the next 10 months?

So many times, I just wanted to close my eyes and enjoy the music the way I do with my earphones plugged into my ears in a closed and empty room but could only bear to close my eyes for 3 seconds each time because the nanasecond-thought of missing anything would immediately send my eyelids flying up.

Oh and when alex stand-curls around the mike stand and his light blue eyes glint under the spotlights singing slowly:
"You can feel my lips undress your eyes
Undress your eyes, undress your eyes
Words of love, words so leisured
Words are poisoned darts of pleasure"

Things that you can only see from a live performance, things that made the $90 so very very worth it. Somehow, I must convince you readers that I am not that massive a rabid fangirl, and even though I have vestiges of that, it's not the main point of this entry or why it was so brilliant.

It was the performance in itself, and these musicians with such a fresh sound, with an audience, a convention of like-minded souls you know? I suppose you have to admit that it is a form of idol worship although that makes me think of *shudder* Taiwanese boybands because for a long while, you've only known the band and their music and brilliance through indirect contact like cds and what, blog posts on their official site. and suddenly, their RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU. Slight underexaggeration to say that things like that don't happen all the time and yes, again I suppose you could blame the celebrity culture that we have right now. But above all, it's just you want to know and meet the people that you think are incredibly talented because gosh, I'm sure they're pretty interesting people aren't they?

AND EVERYBODY WHO GOT TO
A) SHAKE HANDS
B) GET AN AUTOGRAPH
C) MANAGED TO PROCURE SUBSTANTIAL PIECE OF STAGE DEBRIS LIKE DRUMSTICKS AND GUITAR PICKS
D)STALKED THEM BACK TO THE HOTEL AND HAD MAD WILD ORGIES INVOLVING SINGAPOREAN FOOD

DON'T TELL ME OKAY. I WILL KILL YOU WITH MY UH, SMELLY CLOTHES THAT ARE STILL WAITING IN THE LAUNDRY BASKET. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.


My phone is so battered from the mosh pit it wants to cry.
Oh oh I don't want to forget so soon - come back neurones, come back!

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