Franz Ferdinand (Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, 6 October 2005)

After an excellent Clap Your Hands show the night before, I was looking forward to more dancing antics at the Franz Ferdinand show. However, there were a couple of obstacles to this night for me. First, they're playing the Bill Graham which is my least favourite venue in the entire city. I have great memories there (first and second Oasis show, saw two cows fighting there during the Strokes show) but it's just too massive. Second, I had to wake up at the butt crack of dawn the next day so I can argue in court. Yeah, so there's an early curfew for me tonight. Or is there?

We arrived late for Franz Ferdinand because we could care less for the two openers. We did eventually see Cut Copy later in the evening (more on that later). So, we go there and when I entered the doors they were already playing "Do You Want To" which is the song I was anxiously anticipating. Like their performance at Austin City Limits, they played their two most danceable and popular songs early in the set. Luckily, the other fun song, "Take Me Out" we caught just in time and we danced to that.

We tried to get closer, but the crowd wasn't having it. I was surrounded by fatties. One of the fatties even pinched my tities. I felt violated. But, we made do with where we were despite our dislike of where we were and the people around us.

Franz Ferdinand were excellent though, despite the circumstances. The new songs translated really well live, although barely anyone seemed to know what the songs were. "Evil and a Heathen" and "This Boy" were so much fun to dance to. Classics such as "Michael" and "Darts of Pleasure" were great as always. Even the most mellow song of the night "Walk Away" was splendidly done.

We opted to go to the outer limits of the venue against the wall so we can start our own dance party there. And we had it so much better with Franz Ferdinand when we were in the outer boundaries! I forgot what the last few songs of the encore were, but I knew I was hopping around dancing.

After that, we were still in the mood to dance. It was around 11:00pm at this point and the only place where we can get our groove on was Popscene. Cut Copy and Franz Ferdinand were going to be there, so it was a no-brainer that we had to go there. Plus they were open until 3am? Sweet!

We struggled to look for a cab near Mission, but were able to find one after a few blocks. The line outside 330 Ritch was soooooo LONG!! There was no semblance of order because of all the cutting that took place. There were some pure Marina kids there, and it was so annoying. I hate it when the Marina clashes with the "indie" folk. It just creates a weird friction. We waited in line and gave ourselves a midnight deadline, which we pushed back every now and then. We just didn't want to wait, and we definitely needed some booze to sustain our energy at the club.

We finally got in at around 12:15am and headed straight to the bar. After we finished our drinks and witnessing Cut Copy play a pretty fun set of tunes, we started dancing. Later in the evening, around1:39am, Franz Ferdinand started their DJ set. Alex was only there briefly, but the bass player (I forgot his name) spun records. He was pretty horrible with song selection, playing 4 songs by the Beatles in a 10 song set. It was pretty boring, so we left.

And it was 3am by that point and I need to wake up and go to work by 7:45am. I made it. I won my motion. Everything is in it's right place.

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