What a crazed, maniacal fan am I. After seeing Arcade Fire for two straight nights at the GAMH, and missing their third night there due to a trip to L.A. that weekend, I decided to shell out the bucks and see them (again) in L.A. This time, the venue was the Troubadour and I went to see the Arcade Fire play their early show on Sunday night. As you may already know, Arcade Fire had a two day, three show residency at the famed Troubadour, with them playing two shows on Sunday: a 6:30pm matinee and a 9:30pm prime time show.
Opening bands Tyco B and Final Fantasy once again joined the Arcade Fire on this part of the tour. The schedule was tight, so each opener was relegated to a set amount of time (30 minutes max). At around 7pm, members of the Arcade Fire started to enter the venue. At one point, during a brief pause in the Final Fantasy set, I yelled out, "Hey Win!" and Win looked around to see who it was. I raised my beer to assert my presence, he looked at me weird, but nonetheless waved hello. Yeah, I'm a freak. My girlfriend thought so at least.
At 7:45pm, Arcade Fire came on. Unlike their San Francisco shows, where they opened with "Wake Up" and "Laika," they instead opened up with "Tunnels" and, I believe, "Crown of Love." The set was shorter because of the time constraints, with standard setlist songs like "In the Backseat" and the Talking Heads cover of "This is the Place" missing from the setlist. Regardless, core favourites of mine like, "Power Out" and "No Cars Go" were present. Win called the early crowd the "polite crowd," since the night before, the L.A. crowd was really loud and active.
In the middle of the set, Win invited the singer of Tyco B on stage for them to perform "Cars and Phones," which is a demo performed by the Arcade Fire when the Tyco B singer was part of the band. Win said, "the San Francisco crowd asked for this song, so after a couple of days of rehearsing it, here it is." Apparently, this song is available on some P2P sites, but I have yet to hear the demo version. However, this live version is absolutely amazing and is very worthy of being an A-side in any upcoming Arcade Fire release. It's one of the softer songs, with heavy strings and acoustic guitar accompanying it.
The stage antics were again present here, with Richard and Will knocking the crap out of anything solid during "Laika," which was the last song of the main set. The band came on to perform one encore, "Wake Up," which was, yet again spine chilling from beginning to end.
After the short set, the crowd obviously wanted more! Talk was abundant amongst the audience on how they could sneak into the sold out second show. Others were saying that this was the "best show ever!" Nonetheless, the crowd was not disappointed and I'm absolutely certain that when Arcade Fire come around L.A. again, these same people will be there and they will take a few friends along to witness the glory. I brought my girlfriend along and thought that Arcade Fire put on an amazing show, so much so that she is probably listening to their album right now as I type.
Beer Rating: 0.5 Beers (just because it's shorter and it's in L.A.)
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