SleepingPoliceman

“What a lovely little city…someone should write a song about it.”

I’m not saying you have to think it wasn’t a crazy idea for me to travel from Boston to New York and then back in one evening…just to see a show. But if you had seen the posters up around the Hiro Ballroom saying “Only U.S. appearance this year – first time back in three years,” you’d at least understand the imperative nature of the operation. So onto a bus I went at 1pm yesterday, arriving in plenty of time to grab a quick meal with an old friend and then make my way to finally seeing Elbow.

I won’t get into the bus trip down (which involved sitting next to a crazy old woman who kept snapping at the woman behind her and calling her fat) or my brief dinner with my ex (which unsurprisingly went well…we get along well, thank you). I will briefly get into the difficulty I had finding the place (as a general rule, the site that sells the tickets for shows should probably get the street right…thanks, TicketWeb). Once I found the door, I make my way downstairs into the Hiro Ballroom. It’s a place that connects to a hotel, and has an Asian theme, with those hanging paper lanterns, red wallpaper with some sort of Asian (Japanese, maybe? Grandma would kill me) characters on them, and a giant dragon head over the stage. As we found out, the dragon’s eyes light up and its mouth functions as a smoke machine. There were tables off to stage right, a bar off stage left, and a balcony for the VIP-types behind the floor. When I walked in (about 7:45, 7:50), there were about 50 people there. It looked empty.

I saw a couple of people up front by the stage whose existence I was aware of through their participation in online discussion forums for the band, including one person I’d been exchanging emails with in the lead up to the show. Found out from them the following intel: no opening act; show had to end by 10pm because a disco takes over the room then; band going to play about a little less than an hour and a half (which is SOP for them); lead singer Guy hurt his ankle and needs a cane; show is mainly arranged to be a press showcase in advance of the big promo push for their new album in Jan/Feb; band soundchecked a bunch of classics (not fair to call them hits since no one knows them…but you know what I mean, the big songs that you’d want to hear from a band you hadn’t seen live before). I’m getting pumped.

After a pretty long wait and some awesome tunes over the P.A. (including “Words” by Doves, “Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)” by The Arcade Fire, “Road to Nowhere” by Talking Heads, and “The Ballad Of Peter Pumpkinhead” by XTC), the band finally comes out on the stage. It’s about 9:15, 9:20. Despite the annoying wait, we’re stoked. The ballroom is packed, about 300 people hanging all over the (250 person capacity) place. I’m third row center stage. Guy (lead singer) is indeed with cane, and sings from a stool, waving it (the cane, not the stool) around for emphasis (as pictured above…and I just shattered the record for most parenthetical asides in one sentence).

The opener, Station Approach (first song from their new album, Leaders Of The Free World), is amazing, even better than on record. Other early highlights: Red (one of my definite top three songs by them) and Great Expectations (that song that you don’t really pay attention to on the album until you see it live and you realize it’s amazing). But, really, it’s all good. Guy gets some good between song banter going, saying they’re happy be back in the U.S. and in New York, and talking to the dragon head. I can’t relay all the quips and jokes, as they won’t make sense out of context…but they were very entertaining.

The show goes along, being amazing, loads of great stuff…and then, in the middle of one of their biggest songs (relatively speaking, of course), the guitarist’s rig just craps out. Completely. So there’s some crazy make-em-up ad-lib lyrics to the song, then the song stops. Then they have to contend with not having a working guitar setup. This led to a reshuffling of the setlist to do an acoustic song, then an unplanned early encore break. Finally Guy just hosted a Q&A for about 15-20 minutes, which was full of hilarity both intentional (from Guy) and unintentional (from the annoying drunk people in the crowd). This has gone on long enough so I won’t get into actual details, but the band talked about how they got their name, whether they were single, how Guy hurt his foot (asked three separate times leading to three different answers), why Guy has a cane (”Where the fuck have you been, mate?”), and whether they’ll play a cover of a Beyonce song (which, to be fair, in the past they have). Then the guitar is jury rigged to be good enough to go, and they play their last three songs, two of which are my other top three favorites by them (Powder Blue and Switching Off).

No one cares but me, but an approximate setlist…the order gets hazy in the middle, but I’ll do what I can:
Station Approach / Fallen Angel / Red / Mexican Standoff / [a rock-y song I didn't recognize that, upon further review, may be the new b-side The Good Day] / My Very Best / Great Expectations / Fugitive Motel / Leaders Of The Free World / Forget Myself / Newborn [aborted] / Scattered Black & Whites / Newborn [first part, sans guitar]
(Unplanned encore break)
Q&A session / Powder Blue / Grace Under Pressure / Switching Off

(In retrospect, I feel bad about describing the first unfinished song as “Newborn [aborted]” Not so bad that I’ll change it, but still not good.)

Anyway, it was a great show, and thoroughly worth my time and expense. The scary thing is, I was home and in bed by 4:30…and there have definitely been work nights when I didn’t go to New York and back when I ended up going to bed later than that. The moral, as always, is I’m awesome. And Elbow is too.

edit: fixed setlist order (Fugitive Motel came before LOTFW)

This entry was posted on Friday, November 4th, 2005 at 1:18 pm by ptm and is filed under Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.