Alex Kapranos got naked! and other truths, half-truths, and liesOct 15 '05 Write an essay on this topic.The Bottom Line . I've been on a bit of a concert binge lately: three concerts in just over a month. Last night, Friday, October 14th, will be my last for the foreseeable future. I am, of course, disappointed that I have no more concert fun to look forward to, but this last show was such a blast the good memories should last me at least a couple days. Now, I like Franz Ferdinand -- really, really like them -- but I've never been what you could call an obsessed fan. They still seemed like they'd be tons of fun to see live, though, so I decided to find out. What did I think? The Franz were fun, funky, frenetic, frenzied, and a host of other "f" words (no, not the one you're thinking of). They blew the roof off the Tower Theatre, a fantastic venue in the best city in the world, Philly (okay, technically Upper Darby, but it's close enough that singer Alex Kapranos called us Philly). But before all that, fellow Glasgow band Sons and Daughters just blew. The guy singer growled unintelligibly, while the girl shrieked at the top of her lungs and danced like a brain-damaged child. Every song had the exact same stomping rhythm and cymbal crashes, and it was just a very grating half hour. Luckily, before that was the Australian Cut Copy, a weird electronic band whose main instrument was the synthesizer. They've drawn comparisons to Radiohead and New Order, which can never be a bad thing in my mind, and I actually liked them enough to run out and buy their CD during the intermission. The concert was scheduled to start at 8:00, and around 9:45, Franz Ferdinand finally made their entrance to wild cheers and applause. They launched into Jacqueline, a perfect opener for the night with it's soft, quiet beginning and explosion into all-out sing-along fun ("It's always better on holiday/ So much better on holiday/ That's why we only work when we need the money"). Fans of either of the band's two albums would be pleased with the setlist here; both albums were about equally represented. The majority of the audience was on our feet the whole time, singing along to every word of older songs like 40', Darts of Pleasure, and, of course, mega-hit single Take Me Out. Other first album highlights were the incredibly bouncy and fun Dark of the Matinee and the sexy, homoerotic Michael, neither of which I was expecting to hear, but both very pleasant surprises. New album You Could Have It So Much Better was not to be forgotten, either. I was afraid they'd do the entire album, which I'm not too familiar with yet, but they picked a lot of the strongest tracks. Early on, first single Do You Want To got the audience pumped up and singing along, while the slower, acoustic-versed Walk Away offered us a break from the continuous dancing/bouncing we'd been doing all night. I also loved This Boy, with its seemingly random shouts of "I want a car! I want a car!"; Evil and a Heathen, with its fast-paced, almost '50s-sound; and I'm Your Villain, with its abrupt mood changes and killer guitar opening. The Franz fellows, especially Alex, really know how to work the crowd. Alex stripped down to absolutely nothing (hey, I can dream), and when the band came back out for the encore, they refused to start the song until everyone on the floor went into the aisles and got as close to the stage as possible. I had floor seats, and I beat a lot of people off... I mean, up... to end up incredibly close to the stage. I'm pretty sure they did This Boy, Outsiders, and Evil and a Heathen for the encore, but the whole thing was such a blur I might not be thinking straight; I am sure the final song of the night was This Fire, though. I wouldn't have guessed that urging a bunch of Philly natives, many of them drunk, to scream "I'm gonna burn this city!" before sending them back on the streets was a good idea, but it apparently was, as it made for an explosive finale with nary a flame in sight.  |
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