Last night was a good night. After months of searching for the concert tickets I lost about 3 days after getting them in the mail, I finally broke down and called Ticketmaster New Zealand to see if there was any chance of me getting some new tickets for the sold out Vampire Weekend show at the Bruce Mason Centre in Takapuna, Auckland (which is usually a ballet theater). They were like "of course, there will be a $10 surcharge and you can pick them up at the door." Man I felt like a loser worrying about it for almost two months and then it took about 2 minutes and no hassle at all to get them back.
Well the show was pretty sweet, the band sounds EXACTLY like they do on CD so if you were expecting some sweet hippie jam-out sessions you were definitely shit out of luck. But aside from that the crowd was a sweet mix of ugly hipster-type kids, and there were a lot of unloved-mothers (see:Milfs) and a huge portion of the crowd also had 'the disease'. Which was awesome.
The opening band were called Knives at Noon (from Dunedin) and they were not so bad. They reminded me of Interpol if they had more keyboards, or the Killers if they wrote songs that actual killers would want to listen to. Not bad, but decided to have a few Heinekens and creep on the crowd hanging out in the lobby by the merch booth instead of watching most of their set. You can check out their shizzit here if you want...
The headliners came on next which was odd that there was only one opening band, but I guess that's how the world works and I should just get on with it. Vampire weekend played White Sky and Holiday from their new album "Contra" as the first two songs of the night, which are my two favourites from the new album (that I listened to the first time through two days before). The rest of the set was pretty much every song they have, and the encore was Horchata, Mansard Roof and Walcott... good on them for playing their best songs first and last. The worst part of the set was an even sloooooowwwwwwweeeeeerrrrrr version of Taxi Cab that they played with a Viola and a glockenspiel with the lights turned down low. I couldn't see shit and I thought that was going to be lights out for me... I actually thought I was going to pass out and start a domino effect taking down of all the skinny indie kids in our general vicinity.
IN the middle of the show I noticed I was pretty drunk after drinking two cans of heiny. Which is strange as I am a pretty big guy and can usually handle more than 2 cans. Then I remembered the codeine I had earlier in the day (FOR KIDNEY STONES!!!) mixed with 3 hours sleep and not eating dinner. I was pretty messed up and was spilling my half drank beer somehow on the floor... was pretty awesome though. The only problem I had was with the strobe lights; I think they make the show at a VW gig, and would be pretty boring otherwise, but if you are messed up it just makes you want to lay down and take a nap... I was 'This" close to doing it! I definitely recommend the no sleep/no food/codeine/concert/beer mixture when or wherever you have the opportunity. No regrets.
Cameron enjoyed the gig.
