Arcade Fire - 2013-11-27 - Empress Ballroom, Blackpool, UK

This was the one we'd all been waiting for. The Arcade Fire (A.K.A. The Reflektors for this mini-tour) were back on the road celebrating the release of their latest album, Reflektor, and Blackpool was the last stop on the tour.

As with other recent shows, the band requested everyone turn up in either fancy dress or formal wear to help create a party atmosphere, and boy did they oblige! There was everything from spacemen to dancing unicorns to Zippy from Rainbow! As for the atmosphere, this was my 15th time watching the band and I have never been in an Arcade Fire crowd like it - they were awesome!

The show itself was truly memorable. Very rarely have I seen the band in such a jovial mood. At the start of the show, the curtain dropped to reveal the band playing the introduction to Rebellion (Lies) whilst wearing enlarged papier-mâché lookalike heads. After a few seconds, the real band then appeared and ushered the imposters off stage! They then launched into the opening song, Normal Person, and the place erupted when it reached its rousing chorus. The sprung floor of the Empress Ballroom, with something like 2,000 bouncing bodies on it, is a feeling every concert goer should experience at least once in their lifetime!

As great as the show was, I'm sorry to say it is not reflected in the recording.  After the show, I discovered that my left-hand mic had started playing up just after the recording had started. Couple this with the fact that, from where I was stood, the vocals were quite low in the mix and (unusually for Arcade Fire) the bass was also top-heavy. I therefore had to do more processing on this recording than I would normally care to do and even had to copy data from the right-hand channel to make it listenable.

For any other show I probably wouldn't even upload it here for people to download but, despite all these problems, I know this show was very special for the majority of the people who were lucky enough to witness it, so here's the chance for them to hopefully enjoy it again.

Enjoy!

Here's a sample of the recording for those who want to know the quality: Afterlife.mp3

Arcade Fire - 2013-11-27 - Empress Ballroom - FLAC

544MB RAR archive, FLAC format

Arcade Fire - 2013-11-27 - Empress Ballroom - MP3

142MB RAR archive, variable bit rate MP3s (min. 245 kbps)

Setlist:

01. Intro
02. Normal Person
03. Flashbulb Eyes
04. Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)
05. Joan of Arc
06. You Already Know
07. We Exist
08. It's Never Over (Oh Orpheus)
09. Porno
10. Afterlife
11. Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)
12. Wake Up
13. Today Your Love, Tomorrow the World [Ramones cover]
14. Here Comes the Night Time
15. encore break
16. My Body is a Cage
17. Reflektor
18. Haiti

The Who - 2013-06-23 - MEN Arena, Manchester, UK

I'd missed the last time The Who toured Quadrophenia, so this show was long awaited and, once booked, seemed a bloody long time arriving too! The band themselves have said that previous attempts to bring the album to the live stage had not wholly satisfied them and that they wanted one last go at getting it right. And from what I (and everyone else who was present) witnessed, they certainly achieved that - and then some!

At various times there were up to 10 musicians on stage bringing this music to life, along with 4 behind-stage screens that were continually showing archive footage from the band's career. These screens were even used to allow sadly-departed band members John Entwistle and Keith Moon to have solo spots during the show. When Moon sang his parts during Bell Boy, Roger Daltrey stood with his back to the audience, gazing longingly at his old friend.

I would dearly have loved to have seen this great band with all 4 original members in their prime. Alas, it was not to be, but to have seen them twice in the twilight of their amazing career - and to nail a great recording too - will do me for now.

Once the Quadrophenia portion of the show was complete, the band gave us a further 40 minute treat of several songs from their extensive back catalogue. If the show had ended after Quadrophenia I would have gone home happy, but the elongated encore just rounded off a great evening.

And so onto a bit of a whinge about the MEN Arena...

As soon as tickets went on sale, we paid £80 for the best seats available. With some confidence, we half-expected to be towards the front of the arena with a decent view of the stage. What a load of bollocks! We were at the back of the main floor of the arena, some 50 metres from the stage. How they can justify full price for those tickets is beyond me. I was lucky in that I was on the end of the row, towards the centre of the arena and could see the stage quite clearly from an unrestricted view. Other people in the middle of the rows could see bugger all once the show had started and everyone had stood up. If people have to stand to see the show, at least let them choose where they want to stand. The only reason for making shows all-seater is to charge more for seats and thus to make more money: poor, poor form in my book.

As for the recording - I've already commented that I think I nailed it, especially given my relatively poor location within the arena. I think I was helped by the almost static crowd around me - given that we were so far away from the stage, people didn't join in like they may have done if they were further forward. A small mercy, for the recording at least.

The thanks and goodbyes at the end of the show sounded far too real for my liking. I know they're not getting any younger, but it would be a crying shame if we never get to see The Who on tour again, in some form at least.

Here's to Roger and Pete's continued good health.

Enjoy!

The Who - 2013-06-23 - MEN Arena, Manchester, UK - FLAC
878MB RAR archive, FLAC format

The Who - 2013-06-23 - MEN Arena, Manchester, UK - MP3
235MB RAR archive, variable bit rate MP3s (min. 245 kbps)

Setlist:

01. I Am the Sea
02. The Real Me
03. Quadrophenia
04. Cut My Hair
05. The Punk and the Godfather
06. I'm One
07. The Dirty Jobs
08. Helpless Dancer
09. Is It In My Head?
10. I've Had Enough
11. 5:15
12. Sea and Sand
13. Drowned
14. Bell Boy
15. Doctor Jimmy
16. The Rock
17. Love, Reign O'er Me
18. Band Introductions
19. Who Are You
20. You Better You Bet
21. Pinball Wizard
22. Baba O'Riley
23. Won't Get Fooled Again
24. Band Talking
25. Tea & Theatre

(No credits available for photos. If either is yours, let me know!)