I Like Concerts

(alternate title: Concerts Are Fun)

I missed out on seeing the Shout Out Louds on Thursday night (tickets which I won online) because it was the one year anniversary of Dance Right at La Cita. The theme was Disco Prom and because the costume theme nights are usually such a spectacle, how could I resist? Surprisingly, not many people showed up for a theme night, and few were even in costume - very unusual. I suspect many of the infrequent attendees figured it would be utter chaos and decided to forgo the madness. So anyway, I gave those Shout Out Loud tickets to Wade and he was kind enough to give me an over-sized bottle of wine in return. And yes, he DID know that I got them for free.

Friday night I went to see a friend of Katie's play at the Hotel Cafe in Hollywood. Pretty music, but really heavy, I tell you what. Like, should-I-just-go-ahead-and-jump? type music.

Saturday (the main attraction of this blog entry) Karen took me to the Daft Punk concert downtown at the Sports Arena. Boy oh boy, what a show! I definitely have never danced that hard, which says a lot considering my stint as a faux hippie during college; I've been to an awful lot of jam band shows and done my fair share of twirling, prancing, and downright jigging. But Daft Punk put all other dance-worthy concerts to shame. Plus, their space suits were just awesome - for the encore they turned off most of the lights onstage and their suits and helmets were lined in glowing red neon lighting. I've never seen them before so it was all new to me. Thank you for that, once again, Karen.

AND, I just won MORE concert tickets. I absolutely love giveaways. The trick is you keep an eye or ear out for those underground outlets that probably won't have many people calling in/entering right away. This time the tickets are for Martin Rev at the Silverlake Lounge, from good ol' KXLU - gotta love those sometimes-staticky, low numbered radio stations.

Kids are swingin from the power lines

I saw Arcade Fire at The Greek on Wednesday night. It was phenomenal. They were fantastic. Josh and I had seats in section A, row J... which is very close. Where's J in the alphabet? About 13? I just counted - it's 10. So we were 10 rows back from the very tiny 'pit'. I think a shard of guitar wood hit me in the chaos of instrument demolition. They put on such an amazing show and give off such a great energy. (To be said with a German accent:) Zey're so passionate, no? (I don't know why, just because. Probably because it's a cheesy sounding statement.) Things that make Arcade Fire a superb live band: 1) like I said, they're energy - they are all constantly jumping and dancing around, like the devil said, "play music like you mean it or it's your life!" and thy have no choice but to rune around like madmen with their instruments. Well that's just the men in the group who do play so ferociously. The women just dance really exuberantly, with occasional thrashing. Okay, so 2) the fact that there are so many member in the band. There are 10 (I believe) and they seem more like an orchestra than the traditional rock band. That many players just adds to the energy. 3) Most of them repeatedly swap instruments. This probably should be listed as number one, as far as qualifying factors of a great band go. Violinists and brass players stay on their instruments (although I'm sure the brass players switch it up), but everyone else jumps around from guitars to organ to piano to drums to xylophone to accordion to hurdy-gurdy (yes, I looked up what that cranking instrument is called). There were at least 3 different people on the organ throughout the night. Yes, I could just go on and on about how absolutely fantastic Arcade Fire is. OH! And Win, the lead singer, ran throughout the audience during the encore break, all the way up to the back of rows. And they called him down, Price is Right style, because they had gone to a taping that day and were pumped on the show (talked about it between songs and "Richard" was still wearing his over-sized name tag).

Phew, that was long. So,Dance Right Last night. Ryan Gosling is now a regular and I feel the need to hide my face whenever I notice him. Because you know, professing my crush on him was something I did under the assumption that I'd never see him again. Not that he'd remember, but still. I'm awkward like that. Right Marissa? ;) ("Right").