Das „Full Hit Of Summer“
On August 29, I went with a couple guys to see the sold-out „Full Hit Of Summer“ concert, featuring the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and TV On The Radio, along with Dirty Pretty Things and You Say Party! We Say Die! And it was quite the show.
Note: Out of kindness, I'm putting mp3s and whatnot at the end of every post, so check them out.
As we were waiting for the subway to come, we spotted a couple of people who, based on the way they were dressed, looked likely to be heading to the concert too. We ended up sitting across from them on the train and they initiated a conversation with us, in German, asking if we were going to the concert and about the bands we liked. It seems that talking about indie rock seems to be the easiest way to make friends in Austria, too. Our first Austrian pals were named Stefanie and Clemens and they're brother and sister. Stefanie's a big Yeah Yeah Yeahs fan and she had just turned 21 ("so I can drink in America now") so Clemens bought her a ticket as a present. She studied abroad in France last year and lived with people who would only speak German with her, so she said she understood how hard it is to get people to help you learn the language. Clemens told us he's planning on studying either in Seattle or Chicago next year.
The concert venue, Arena, is amazing. It's this old abandoned meat factory that was, according to Clemens, "conquered by punks" in the '80s and converted into an open-air venue. You can either stand in the big open space in front of the stage or in the elevated ring of concrete surrounding the arena. The ground is on an angle up from the stage, so you get a pretty good view no matter where you are. There seemed to be three or four different bars within the place...as well as the requisite hippie-incense-and-tie-dye stand.
Arena
We missed You Say Party! We Say Die!. TV On The Radio dominated. It wasn't as huge of a sound as when I saw them open for The Pixies in New York, but I think they're tighter as a band. Also, Kyp Malone's beard is bigger. Surprisingly, they didn't play that much off of Return To Cookie Mountain, which may be my favorite album of the year so far. Tunde Adebimpe kept complaining about his monitor not being loud enough, and when saying, "Make it louder" in a German accent still didn't help, he resorted to mumbling a bunch of Star Wars quotes into the microphone. Near the end of the concert, he accidentally fell backwards onto the drumset and mumbled something else about breaking his tailbone.
Tunde Adebimpe and Kyp Malone of TV On The Radio
Dirty Pretty Things is a band formed by one of the guys from The Libertines, I guess. They were okay... they sounded like pretty much every other band coming out of the UK these days. They had kind of an obnoxious image thing going - with a kick-ass banner hanging behind them in real tough looking script proclaiming their name, and with tons of Union Jacks all over the stage.
The Yeah Yeah Yeahs were a lot of fun. The crowd up until this point had been surprisingly well-mannered and nonaggressive. You always had tons of space around you where you were standing. Once Karen O took the stage, they started to cluster together a little more and start dancing. She was wearing some crazy yellow-and-purple unitard with a cape and a mask. TV On the Radio joined them for their encore to do "Modern Romance" together.
Karen O of Yeah Yeah Yeahs
We got Stefanie and Clemens's e-mail address and phone numbers. We finally e-mailed them two days ago, but so far no response. Hopefully they still like me.
Video of the YYYs playing "Turn Into" at Full Hit Of Summer
Note: Out of kindness, I'm putting mp3s and whatnot at the end of every post, so check them out.
As we were waiting for the subway to come, we spotted a couple of people who, based on the way they were dressed, looked likely to be heading to the concert too. We ended up sitting across from them on the train and they initiated a conversation with us, in German, asking if we were going to the concert and about the bands we liked. It seems that talking about indie rock seems to be the easiest way to make friends in Austria, too. Our first Austrian pals were named Stefanie and Clemens and they're brother and sister. Stefanie's a big Yeah Yeah Yeahs fan and she had just turned 21 ("so I can drink in America now") so Clemens bought her a ticket as a present. She studied abroad in France last year and lived with people who would only speak German with her, so she said she understood how hard it is to get people to help you learn the language. Clemens told us he's planning on studying either in Seattle or Chicago next year.
The concert venue, Arena, is amazing. It's this old abandoned meat factory that was, according to Clemens, "conquered by punks" in the '80s and converted into an open-air venue. You can either stand in the big open space in front of the stage or in the elevated ring of concrete surrounding the arena. The ground is on an angle up from the stage, so you get a pretty good view no matter where you are. There seemed to be three or four different bars within the place...as well as the requisite hippie-incense-and-tie-dye stand.
 |  |
We missed You Say Party! We Say Die!. TV On The Radio dominated. It wasn't as huge of a sound as when I saw them open for The Pixies in New York, but I think they're tighter as a band. Also, Kyp Malone's beard is bigger. Surprisingly, they didn't play that much off of Return To Cookie Mountain, which may be my favorite album of the year so far. Tunde Adebimpe kept complaining about his monitor not being loud enough, and when saying, "Make it louder" in a German accent still didn't help, he resorted to mumbling a bunch of Star Wars quotes into the microphone. Near the end of the concert, he accidentally fell backwards onto the drumset and mumbled something else about breaking his tailbone.
 |  |
Dirty Pretty Things is a band formed by one of the guys from The Libertines, I guess. They were okay... they sounded like pretty much every other band coming out of the UK these days. They had kind of an obnoxious image thing going - with a kick-ass banner hanging behind them in real tough looking script proclaiming their name, and with tons of Union Jacks all over the stage.
The Yeah Yeah Yeahs were a lot of fun. The crowd up until this point had been surprisingly well-mannered and nonaggressive. You always had tons of space around you where you were standing. Once Karen O took the stage, they started to cluster together a little more and start dancing. She was wearing some crazy yellow-and-purple unitard with a cape and a mask. TV On the Radio joined them for their encore to do "Modern Romance" together.
 |  |
We got Stefanie and Clemens's e-mail address and phone numbers. We finally e-mailed them two days ago, but so far no response. Hopefully they still like me.
Die Wiener Kompilation
Video of the YYYs playing "Turn Into" at Full Hit Of Summer
- TV On The Radio - Province (feat. David Bowie)
from Return to Cookie Mountain (2006) - Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Gold Lion
from Show Your Bones (2006)
posted by Evan C. at 12:46 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home