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Posts tagged concert
Phoenix and Two Door Cinema Club at Paradiso
3678 days
Last Friday night in Amsterdam Jess and I were privvy to something pretty cool. We had booked tickets to see Phoenix months ago when we were still in Australia. This was a concert that we definitely wanted to see!
In true Jess and Jase style, we arrived at the venue, Paradiso earlier than needed. Entering the main concert hall we were very impressed – Paradiso is housed in an old church that was built in the 19th century, and while it has been refurbished to be suitable for concerts, it still retains a lot of it’s former charm.
Since we were there early we took prime position at the front of the stage and before long the support act, Two Door Cinema Club played. We stumbled across them well before we bought the tickets to the concert, and when we found out they were the support act it was a sweet little bonus. It was great to hear them live and see a solid performance out of them.
Phoenix followed up with an absolutely phenomenal show. To me, everything was perfect. The music was spot on, their “act” was top quality, and the light show just sealed the deal. To sound as good as their album while playing in front of a few hundred people is something they should be proud of. Much screaming, clapping and whistling saw Phoenix return to the stage for one of the longest encores I’ve seen. Initially vocalist Thomas Mars and guitarist Christian Mazzalai returned to play a few very touching covers, before Thomas told everyone that it was their bass player – Deck D’Arcy’s birthday. The crowd sang “Happy Birthday” to him and then the full band put on the second half of their show.
Special mention goes out to their drummer Thomas Hedlund who looked as though he was putting every last bit of his energy into the show. His intensity on the drums was just another reason why this was one of the best concerts I have been to.
Vampire Weekend at Astra Kulturhaus in Berlin
0709 days
I’m no music reviewer, I’ll leave that to my brother in law (re: savetwofour.com). I am however, a music lover and a tourist in a foreign country and these two things combined with an awesome set is a beautiful thing.
Jess and I booked these tickets quite some time ago. We had no idea where the Astra was, how big it was or what the crowd was like. We have however, been fans of Vampire Weekend for a few years now, and we planned on being around Berlin at this time so we took the chance.
We walked towards where the Astra should be… It wasn’t there. No signs, just a scummy looking courtyard. We walked passed assuming it was elsewhere but ended up back at the gate to the courtyard trying to find out where to go. We walked inside, through the snow and mud and found a light with an “Astra” logo. As it turns out this whole area was some sort of (probably pseudo) underground music scene.
While the outside of the building was tired and covered in graffiti, the interior was very grand. There were multiple bars, cloak rooms, plenty of velvet and a couple of chandeliers to light the place up.
We grabbed a few overpriced drinks (5.50EUR is a lot to backpackers!) and then found our way to the front of the stage in prime position for the support band, Fan Death.
Fan Death were alright. They supported well with some quality music and their drummer was great, although their general act and image was a bit too “bandwagonish” for me. You know.. Karen O (YYY’s) clothes, an ET doll as their prize posession and so on. Regardless, they put on a good show and lets face it, a live band is always better than on an album. No disrespect! Before Fan Death finished, I was lucky enough to take a quick photo of Vampire Weekend’s set list. Jess and I were both so stoked at this point – it was the first concert we’d been to for years as we’ve been saving for this trip.
Vampire Weekend went off. For those who don’t know they are an Indie Rock band from New York City. Ezra Koenig, the lead singer kept telling the crowd he wanted us to sweat. We were drenched by the time the concert was over, and we weren’t the only ones. The concert was an opportunity to see the band as musicians, rather than seeing them on a film clip. Bass guitarist Chris Baio swapped guitairs every second song, and played a double bass at one stage.
They played songs old and new. Jess loved Oxford Comma while I’ve been struggling to get Cape Cod out of my head ever since. Their set actually helped me to enjoy and understand some songs of theirs that I had previously felt indifferent to.
Ultimately we had a great night. We were able to really let loose and have some fun. We walked back to the S-bahn and went back to the hostel for a few hours sleep – at 5:30am we were up to board our train to Warsaw, but that is another story…
Vampire Weekend in Berlin!
0752 days
Woot! Our tickets to Vampire Weekend just rocked up in the mail. They are playing at the Astra Kulturhaus in Berlin on Friday 19th Feb. Jess is super stoked because she’s really into them at the moment. Life is awesome right now!
Here’s them playing “Cousins” from their new album “Contra”.
Phoenix in Amsterdam!
0790 days
We haven’t planned much at all lately, except for buying tickets to see Phoenix and Two Door Cinema Club in Amsterdam. Jess and I both really like Phoenix – we’ve been listening to them for years, and I’m a big fan of Two Door Cinema Club (Jess likes them, just doesn’t listen to as much music as me). It’s at a place called Paradiso – hopefully a cool venue to check out.
Booking was a bit tricky at first until I found out about Ticketmaster. They are located in a fair few countries and just send you an electronic PDF ticket that you print yourself. Too easy! It’s basically the only way that we could get a ticket since we are overseas – most vendors will only send tickets to the country that they are in.
It ended up costing us just under AUD$80 to book the tickets, which seems pretty reasonable. I doubt we could see them for $40 each in Australia. So stoked. Now we know where we’ll be on March 26th!
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