Poptarticus

A few years ago, I visited Amsterdam with a really good friend of mine for a few days of sightseeing and other stuff. He really wanted to go to the red light district, and have a taste of that, so I went off to some food market or museum and he went there and had a taste.

His first visit was fantastic. Without getting into too much detail, I’ll just say he had a great time, a good girl, who was nice to him and made his world turn and was worth the price it cost him.

He was impressed enough with this first encounter that he wanted to go back the next day. I tried to talk him out of it, because if the first time is so fantastic, why not let that be the memory? What are the chances of it getting Even Better? We are talking about a visit to a hooker here.

But of course he went back and the second time was not quite the same. The euphoria, the bliss, gone; in it’s place a vacuum. A sadness. Only made worse because just the day before, it was so great.

I didn’t really mean, in the beginning, to equate Arcade Fire with Amsterdam hookers when I started writing this, but it just sort of happened that way. Last night I saw Arcade Fire at the Hollywood Bowl and it was, well, horrible in the way it would be if I was a guy and one night I paid for a really good blow job and the next day, paid for one but it sucked.

That is crude, I know. And in the end this wasn’t really the fault of the band.

I guess I had a bit too high of an expectation, because I had such a stellar experience at the Greek Theatre show, and also because I love the Hollywood Bowl. They let you bring your own alcohol in! For the most part this is a truly civilized and fantastic policy, but last night I witnessed how this sort of thing can be abused and pretty much fuck everything up.

I guess when I say “fuck everything up” I mean, there were many thousands of people there who were pretty fucked up, which would have been cool except most of them were absolutely not into the band. Which meant they stood around, drinking and talking. It was so distressing and sad. When the band got louder, the talking got louder. It was like being at a party where they were playing Arcade Fire records. I ran up and down the stairs by my seat trying to find a place to listen to the band; it was impossible. EVERYONE was talking. At one point this guy in front of me, possibly feeling the darts I was mentally throwing at the back of his neck, looks back and screams, IT’S MIDNIGHT ON THE EAST COAST, DUDES! So. Fucking. What. You ran out of things to say, so you had to scream that? If you want to be an asshole, at least be creative about it.

To make matters a bit worse, Arcade Fire sounded awful in the Hollywood Bowl. Murky, dirty; I couldn’t hear the vocals a lot of the time. But that is not surprising when 12,000 of L.A.’s finest assholes were surrounding me (the other 2000 people there, I am positive, were totally cool. Let’s give that one back to mankind, at least.)

One cool tidbit of the evening was the opener LCD Soundsystem, who absolutely blew me away; killer, LOUD dance music, flawlessly performed. This was earlier in the evening before Clueless Plus Three Times Three Thousand all tried to find their seats in the dark.

I guess I made the mistake, last night, of thinking one experience could be repeated. It can’t, and it won’t - I don’t care what deadheads or fans of Dave Matthews say. Magic happens infrequently and is usually due to help from those around you. All the people around me last night, were not contributing and furthermore, will never possess the kind of magic that will lift them off the ground.

Too bad, because it could have been the Most Incredible Night Ever.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 21st, 2007 at 9:22 pm and is filed under Adventures in Rock and Roll. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.