Life > February 22, 2007

By Mike Baireuther

Contributing writer

Bloc Party in London. I tried to get tickets months before coming to England, only to find every show sold out.

Then, around noon on the day of one of the shows, my boss at my internship called me. The company I am currently working for does street marketing for bands, including Bloc Party, and they secured a ticket for me.

I gathered my things and took the tube into the city.  Meanwhile, my boss headed over to see the first of five consecutive Arcade Fire shows she “had” to go to during the week.

After hanging posters and passing out flyers, I entered the famous London Astoria.  There hasn’t been much good press about Bloc Party’s new album, A Weekend in the City, but you would never know that from the show.

While certainly not a triumph by Bloc Party’s standards, A Weekend in the City is a record that reflects a current time and place. Its songs entail a hopeless escapism in the youth culture of modern day London.

The crowd, full of the disenchanted Londoners that populate Bloc Party’s songs, waited with the drunken energy of a mouse trap.  Audience members were singing along with the pre-set playlist pumping over the PA. 

Then came the band, and this pent up energy flipped in unison.  Unlike me, almost everyone in the crowd had heard the album.  “Song for Clay (Disappear Here),” with its simple, driving snare drum, sent thousands into unified, jumping elation.

There were sweaty mounds of Englishmen and women strewn about, kids just slammed into each other. Madness. Sheer, utter madness.  I did not even try and get into the pit of kids pushing and jumping and moving as one.

Despite my attempts to stand on the fringes, as lead singer Kele Okereke shouted with his 4,000 best friends, “East London is a vampire, it sucks the joy out of me,” the swirling masses dragged me in.

It was nearly impossible to breathe at some points.  Kids were just screaming their lungs out, whether they knew the words or not.

Not that any of this is particularly unique to many modern rock shows (for better of worse), but never has an audience so enveloped me.  Never have I been at a show that was this highly anticipated.  Both band and audience were franticly infatuated with the moment.

I lost my hat.  That’s why I didn’t bring my favorite one.  One kid fell down, at least that I saw.  A small group of us did our best to keep the waves of audience members from running over him, trying to pull him up by the collar of his shirt while he scrounged on the floor for his glasses.

There was a strange sense of camaraderie amongst the kids: some shirtless, some drunk, some high, some all of the above.  Some of it was just mindless idiots getting the chance to run into people without reprimand. But for a few moments, it was this ephemeral, uplifting, glorious experience.

At one point, leaping in beat with the thousand other kids, I just thought, “Can this get any better?  I’m in a foreign country, watching a band play like they are about to be the next greatest thing in the world, in front of all their old friends at home.  Wow ... I’m a real sap-puss.  Hey, does that guy next to me have his arm around me? Yup, he does.  Wait, was that a hand I just felt on the back of my head ... or a shoe ... yup, shoe.”

I just could not stop smiling.  Even at its most claustrophobic, befuddling, asphyxiating moments, this concert was everything I wanted from London.