Loud and well-lit

Inspiration: The Strokes show

Created: Mon 2 Feb 2004 14:22

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The night opened with the straight-down-the-line-rock of Kings of Leon. Well, actually, it started with The Mess Hall, but I wasn't there early enough to see them. I'm not all that familiar with Kings of Leon's stuff, but I sure liked their rock moves and facial hair. The drummer even joined The Strokes onstage for a very ad-hoc performance of their last song.

Compared with Kings of Leon, The Strokes relied a lot more heavily on lighting to create atmosphere and mood. Their set was go-go-go, but in a seated venue like The Palais, they weren't quite managing to garner the level of enthusiasm from the audience that they had hoped for. This seemed to agitate Julian a little, and his between song banter became less "it's great to be in Melbourne!" and more "do you people down here even know what The Simpsons is? And by the way, where are all the koala bears?". Far less New York City cool than Interpol in my opinion.

Audience stereotype spotted: the seat stealer. Upon being questioned by the seat's rightful owner, this guy gives a look as if to say "Ohhh, so my ticket doesn't say row A seat 15?! Silly old me." and promptly moves to the next best seat he can find.

Towards the end of the show, Julian pulled his mic off its stand and clambered offstage to sing The Clash's Clamp Down. Hopefully this was enough to quench his thirst for a more raw show, with better audience participation. But really, if you want the crowd to go nuts, next time, pick a non-seated venue. I couldn't quite figure out whether it was their frustration with the venue or the fact that they didn't have any songs left in their repertoire, but this was the first show I've been to in ages where there was no encore.

First coupla photos once again kindly provided by Chris.

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