Franz Ferdinand, August 27 at the Palladium

Vanessa and I had the Franz Ferdinand tickets from the Dead Weather show two nights before and we had texted Ahmed and Rachel and they were in for the show as well. Like I did for the other show I rode my bike to the NoHo subway station and rode to the Hollywood & Vine stop, to meet the others for a drink before the show, which of course led to more drinking at the show. I hadn't had high expectations for the show; if the ticket had cost more than $10 or if Vanessa wasn't so excited about it I would have skipped it. Franz's performance at Coachella in 2006 was definitive for me, enough that I didn't feel I had to see them there again in '09 and I wasn't really into their new album at the time anyway. But it didn't matter at the show, since it'd didn't matter what the songs were or how they'd played them in the past. The place exploded into a free-for-all dance-party (at least for us, aided by being fairly intoxicated). They played all the best stuff from the first two albums with an invigorated energy that would make you think it was the first date of the tour, and not just a stop since they were in town opening for Green Day, and the new stuff took on a life of it own well beyond how it was captured on the album. The venue itself, the Palladium, was also a revelation. It had always been my least favorite place to see shows, for various reasons, but it had been remodeled the year before and this was my first visit since then. (And I hated the old version so much that I didn't want to go to the new one until I had to.) The new place was a vast improvement, with an interior that looked brand-new, a superior sound-system, and bouncers as pleasant as anywhere else. Suddenly the place became one of my favorite places for concerts and I would eagerly go there again. We left and were on such a high that bacon-wrapped street-dogs seemed like a good idea, then we got on the train and split up. When we got back to NoHo I talked Rachel into going to Big Wang's for more beer (for me, not her) and when I went back to the station I found that my bicycle had been stolen. It was a lot of mixed feelings, that horrible, dirty feeling of being violated, but on top of a great night with friends and a great show, and I was also pretty drunk. It took me a few days to recover from it all.

Franz Ferdinand's set-list:
"Bite Hard"
"The Dark of the Matinée"
"No You Girls"
"Van Tango"
"This Fire"
"Turn It On"
"Can't Stop Feeling"
"Walk Away"
"Do You Want To"
"Take Me Out"
"What She Came For"
"The Fallen"
"40'"
"Outsiders"

"Michael"
"Darts of Pleasure"
"Ulysses"
"Auf Achse"
"Lucid Dreams