Matty and I walked to the Greek Theatre last week to catch the first of Arcade Fire's two sold-out shows in Los Angeles. Nights like this are when I extra-love living in Los Feliz. Two punk rockers in a pick-up truck drove by Matty and me and asked where we parked our car. "At my house," I replied with glee, pointing a mile down Vermont Avenue. They smirked; we continued climbing the hill to the open theater where we saw Electrelane do their Scottish rendition of the all-girl art rock perfected by Japan's OOIOO. Notice the guitarist rubbing her strings against the amp?
For a snack I got some French fries and a double margarita. Matty got a 20-ounce can of Tecate. We were loopy by the time Arcade Fire took to the stage at 8:45 p.m.
God bless the Canadians, who are so earnest, talented, happy and tight on stage. I knew that their new album is called Neon Bible, but I didn't think that they had to be that literal with all the neon lights. If the band was really nerdy, they would have staged a free concert at LACMA where a retrospective of Dan Flavin's neon art is currently on display. I went to the opening reception for Flavin's show a couple of weeks ago. Like the museum guards, I wore my sunglasses at night.
Arcade Fire has 10 members. Here they are in all their glory. The accordion player, who is married to the lead singer, sounds like a Canadian-Haitian Bjork.
Is this a nod to Blue Man Group? If only the poor chap who sat in front of us could have had his face imposed on the cerulean cut-out. His date was bored out of her mind. She would have stuck an IV of beer into her vein if she could have. She didn't deserve the dude who got so into Arcade Fire's music that he started doing some interpretative dance moves to the encore, "Wake Up."
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