Thursday, November 26, 2009

UK.2.2.T in the Park - Friday


Friday was mostly spent hanging around waiting for 5PM when the arena would open. Anja and I took this time to plan who we'd be watching over the next 3 days.

T in the Park has a tradition called 'Fancy Dress Fridays" and kids make the most insane effort for this. Loads and loads of people dressed up, but the 2 groups that stick in my head were a couple dressed as the milk cartons from Blur's "Coffee and TV" music video and a gang of 12 kids dressed as storm troopers, led by Darth Vader, with a Princess Leia handcuffed and held prisoner. Cam, Col, Rod and I brought back their old Greenisforturbo power ranger outfits...

Considering the arena only opened at 5, the lineup for the Friday was a lot smaller than it would be on Saturday and Sunday. But one of the acts I was most excited too see at the festival were playing Friday night; The Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
As soon as I first layed my paws on their "Master" EP, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were instantly one of my favorite bands. reading about their live shows made me wish I could be in some tiny club in NYC seeing Nick Zinner creating walls of sound with a single guitar or Karen O swallowing her mic while screaming "Aaaarrrrt Staaaarrrrr".
While, for me, the bands past 2 albums don't hold a candle to their first album and earlier tracks, I really love them for what they are. So yeah, I was pretty massively excited. Anja and I even sacrificed seeing Camera Obscura to make sure we could be right in the front for YYYs.

The show was pretty great, with stage design matching the artwork of their single "Zero".

The band performed in front of a massive eyeball. There were also giant inflatable eyeballs bouncing around on the crowd.
Anja told me that when she saw them in London the huge eyeball at the back of the stage rolled back and they started projecting stuff onto it. I'd like to have seen that.

Everything about the show was quite perfect. They played a good amount of the old songs, and the newer songs translated live really well. But the whole thing was just kinda sad for me - seeing the 4 members spread out over this massive stage, even where we were from the barrier they were miles away. Just wished I could be seeing them in some tiny club, crammed onto a little stage, with all that energy contained and bouncing around the room, not just drifting off into the Scottish, evening air.

That said, seeing the band perform "Skeletons" with an eight piece bagpipe section was a pretty freaking incredible moment that just wouldn't have been the same anywhere else in the world.

So Friday was pretty damn awesome, but nothing could have prepared us for what would happen 12 hours into the next day...

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