Luna Park

I had seen posters for this concert the week before I left for Mendoza. I thought to myself "that would be cool to go see, if only I could get tickets and some people to go." Monday, in talking with some of the folks I had met previously, they were going to go, that they got there tickets on Saturday, and I should try and grab a ticket myself.

So, last night, I went to see Franz Ferdinand at Luna Park in Buenos Aires.

Bloody good show. We were standing just in the middle of the crowd of to the right, at first. When the band started (there was no opening band - I was blown away by that fact alone) the crowd surged up to the front, and I was dragged along with it. Pretty quickly, I was standing in a sea of Argentines, five people deep from center stage. People jumping, pushing, screaming, singing along (very strange to hear people singing English songs with a Spanish accent). It was fantastic.

They played straight through for an hour, followed up by a four-song encore with a really great drum solo, played by three guys on one drum set. It seemed like both the crowd and the band had to warm up to each other. Perhaps it was the langauge barrier, perhaps it was the fact that they were really in town to open for U2. They played a lot of songs from their new album at first, but once they started playing numbers from first album, the energy really picked up.

This was a much different show from the first time I saw them. They played at the Fine Line in Minneapolis two years ago. That show was much more intimate, with a lot more conversation in between songs. Of course, they had only released the one album and a single at the time. They did less improvistion during the breaks at that show, though. Here, they seemed more at ease with adding some variation on the songs during the breaks.

Absolutely covered with sweat as we left (the down side of the center-front - other people's sweat), I enjoyed a well deserved beer.

Check off Night Out in a Crazy Crowd off the list.