Snow Patrol, Keane, The Shins, The Killers, Franz Ferdinand, Modest Mouse

So last night Chris and Ritchie and I went to see this big arenafest. I haven't been to a show like that, in that kind of venue, in who knows how long. I'm thinking the last time was in high school. There were lots of fourteen-year-olds. No one told me that Nintendo was a sponsor.

We missed the first half or so of Snow Patrol due to traffic and crappy weather, which is too bad, since I've wanted to see them for a while and since the part of their set that we did catch was pretty good.

I thought Keane's pianist was going to knock himself out with his epileptic-type knees-almost-hitting-head seizures while he was playing. That man is a peril to himself.

The Shins, The Killers, and Franz Ferdinand all had very tight sets, especially Franz Ferdinand. I wanted the sets to be longer, and I left wanting to listen to those albums. If I'd been by myself, I probably would have left the seats we had and head to the floor to dance around more. How else to frighten the teenagers?

Modest Mouse headlined, if you can call it that. Seriously? I've probably seen over a thousand bands in the last ten years. They might have been the worst. If you have the chance to see them live, skip it and listen to the first third of their album instead. After the first couple of tracks, people started pouring out of the venue in droves. Maybe they got tired of the minute-long pauses for tuning up between tracks, or maybe it was the way every musician picked his own key to pretend to stick to, or maybe it was the way this totally lackluster crapfest followed the truly splendid Franz Ferdinand. All I know is that after about 3/4 of the set, we gave up too. It was cruel to put us through that at an alcohol-free event. Last time I sit through that without a flask!