“You are the latest contender, You are the one to remember”
-Darts of Pleasure, Franz Ferdinand

Franz Ferdinand rocked the half-empty Ricoh Coliseum last night and I have the pictures to prove it.


The FF show was great. Saw it with Dirk, Nayeli, the “Good” Chris R and his friend Liz (the two of them spent the extra cash for floor tix). They really played a lot of songs from both of their albums. Frontman Alex Kapranos was quite the showman, jumping up on top of the drum kit and playing his guitar and drinking beer. One of the highlights was at one point during the encore, 3 of them were playing one drum kit, which was cool. Paul the drummer played guitar for one of the songs while their friend stepped in to play the drums, proving that it’s good to have famous friends because you get to be a secondary member of the band and not just a roadie.

“I know that you will surrender”

The arena however, was only about half full at my best optimistic guess. It must be quite a change to go from opening for U2 to 35,000 people to playing a half-empty (pessimistic this time) arena. But they rocked it anyway. The crowd on the floor jumped up and down, as did Dirk, Nayeli and I in our seats, which had great views of the stage. The nice thing about not being crammed into a sold out row is that you have room to dance, which we did for the entire shows, as well as sang along to all the songs. And I gotta give props to the old dude in front of us who sang along to every song too. We thought he was just a parent being dragged by his son to the show, but Dad proved more lively than Son.

“This was an easy one, feel the word and melt upon it, Words of love, words so leisured, Words are poisoned darts of pleasure”

Take Me Out, Michael, Dark of the Matinee, This Fire, and Do You Want To were my faves. They opened with Jacqueline and ended the show with This Fire. Relatively short set, but that’s what you get when you only have 2 albums and some of your songs are under 3 minutes. I would see them again, but I would prefer them in a smaller venue, or at least get floor tickets if they were going to play somewhere larger. The only real complaint was that the merchandise people had planned poorly. Before the show even started they had run out of some shirts completely and others only had extreme sizes left- XS or XL. That and they weren’t that nice (except yours Dirk…damn you for being so lanky).

“You are the devil, That sells a line of dark fantastic passion”


And now, I provide you with commentary from Kate, who I offended with yesterday’s pogo-tirade:

“I'm offended about your overrated pogo comment. I do enjoy the pogo ball, it was a lot of fun, although if you were not paying attention, sometimes if you were in pogo induced euphoria, you could bounce right over and hit your face on the concrete...that was overrated. Pogos, i.e. the hotdog dipped in cornbready goodness and fried to a lovely artificial yellow....they are still number one with me. I shake my fist at you…”

And look, here are some U2 pictures from the ACC shows in September:

For those of you in the know, there are more U2 pictures on my Yahoo Photos webpage, or I can email them to you.

OVERRATED: The bag search at concerts. Thank you for opening up my bag, glancing in to it and telling me to move on without probing deeper. Like you can really see my camera, wallet, phone, iPod, keys, knick knacks and paraphernalia underneath my shows with one cursory glance. What about the pockets man! Not that I feel threatened at a Franz show, but I could have had a knife in there, as could have any number of crazy guys.
UNDERRATED: Having more than one exit at a venue which holds mass amounts of people. See Rachel and Nayeli taking 20 minutes to get out of the Coliseum through its only exit. Hate to be there when it’s packed.

“Ich heiße superfantastisch”