Getting cozy next to the Fire

We were already stoked with our third row seats and our night grew exponentially in amazingness factor when, seconds into the first song of the evening, Win Butler (and, sadly for me, Regine's husband) told the audience to forget our seats and come right up to the stage. Sue and I quickly glanced at each other, and a moment later we were practically hurling ourselves over the two rows of seats in front of us to get right up to the stage. And right up to the stage we were, as seen by the couple of pics posted here.

This was the first rock show I had been to in almost two years where I was virtually front and center and HOLY CRAP was it great. Nothing quite brings back your youth like jumping, yelling and sweating simultaneously with hundreds of other people who are just as passionate and into the moment as you are - and I mean that seriously.

Whether it was Win's dark, soulful vocals, the band's omnipresent Wall of Sound aural aesthetic or Regine's... well everything about Regine, but mostly her general exuberance, I was entranced from the first to last moments. It went by faster than just about any concert I can remember.

I do consider myself a true Arcade Fire fan - I've been listening to their stuff for about three years and I download just about every recording of theirs that I can dig up. But I learned something Saturday night. While I knew just about every nuance and note on almost every instrument the moment before it was played, I discovered that for whatever reason I didn't know the band's lyrics as well as I thought. I knew a good chunk, don't get me wrong, but there were more times than I was comfortable with where I'd be yelling out a line and then suddenly stutter halfway through, realizing I couldn't complete it. Sometimes you dig a band because of the lyrics and sometimes because of the music, so I guess I learned a little bit better why I love Arcade Fire that night.

Overall, the concert was a 9 out of 10. They got points for ridiculous enthusiasm, bringing the fans up close, talking to the audience and, of course, damn good music. It really was a perfect show. 10 out of 10 shows are almost a myth. They only happen under the rarest of circumstances and take a magical convergence of factors. First off, your physical placement in relation to the band has to be perfect. In our case, it was. Then, they have to play your personal favorite songs, which may not be everyone else's, so it's just a luck of the draw. They played "No Cars Go" and "Black Waves/Bad Vibrations" but passed on "Neighborhood #1," not that I can fault them for that. Finally, the hardest objective to obtain of all is to hear those tunes in a particular order you have in your mind - they might play your favorite songs, but don't you always want to hear those ones last? While they did play a couple of my very favorite tunes, they were in the first half of the set.

Ah well. Trivial complaints in the grand scheme of things. In fact, they're not really complaints at all. This will go down as one of the best concerts I've ever seen. And Regine, if you read this, say hi.