England, Not Ontario

Today Bob and I met near his school and took the bus over to Brixton together. We wandered around a bit, coming across this pair of matching murals:

We ended up having a cheap pub meal for dinner, after our attempt to have jerk chicken at an interesting hole-in-the-wall place was foiled by the restaurant annoyingly only serving their cheaper combos for takeaway, to which we reconciled ourselves, even though we had no idea where we'd be able to sit and eat nearby, only to find out that they didn't have any jerk chicken left. Anyway, we finished eating just before 7:00 P.M., which worked out perfectly, since that was when our tickets for tonight's show at the cavernous Brixton Academy would be ready for pick-up. Tonight was the first of Arcade Fire's four sold-out shows at the 5,000-person-capacity venue, and considering that all 20,000 tickets sold out in some ten minutes, we consider ourselves very, very lucky to have lucked into our tickets. While it may be a bit strange for two Canadians to see a Montreal band for the first time in London (England, not Ontario--something we had to clear up with people when we told them we were moving to "London"), Arcade Fire were worth the wait. In fact, they put on the most satisfying, dynamic concert we've been to in quite some time--a real "show."

When I bought tickets, I had the choice of "stalls" (i.e. standing) on the lower level or "unreserved seating/ standing" on the upper level. It was a bit of a difficult choice, since I had never been to the venue before and was wary that we'd end up having to stand on the upper level, but I can rarely see anything when standing on the lower level in large venues. I knew that the tickets would sell out quickly (although ten minutes still surprised me), so I didn't want to think about it too hard as I stared at the computer screen and just made my choice, happy that we'd be at the show in any form. In the end, we got good seats and had a perfect, comfortable view for the night. Add in the typically early finish time of London rock shows (11:00 P.M.) and the unexpected bonus of the venue being non-smoking that evening (at the band's request? apparently it isn't usually non-smoking), and it was a pretty perfect night of intoxicating music amongst a very appreciative, enthusiastic crowd. After the show, it seemed like all 5,000 people walked over to the nearby tube station, and we were lucky enough to get seats on an empty train (Brixton is at the southern end of the Victoria Line, so the train was just starting its journey north) before our entire carriage filled up with concertgoers, smiling and talking about the show all the whole way home.