Tuesday, January 31, 2006

I'm so lucky, lucky lucky (again)

I have a rock and roll story!!!!!! Boy do I ahve a rock and roll story. It involves on scottish rock band, one gorgeous guitarist, and one big dork.

The Age Preview magazine: '[Franz Ferdinand] bring exactly the same showmanship to that tiny stage as they did to the stadium. Kapranos and McCarthy can smile and flirt and make eye contact in a way that would be clearly impossible (or, anyway, insvisible) in a stadium...' How true this was tonight for me, as you are about to find out...

Tonight my boyfriend, brother and I went to the Franz Ferdinand gig. We went down at what we believed was a fairly early hour (5.30 for doors opening at 8pm) so we bought dinner and went down to the Palace to wait. We weren't really sure where to sit given that there's two sets of stairs but luckily we picked the one nearer the front of the queue. We spent the hours chatting with other people and I got to relate my Franz Ferdinand video shoot story (briefly, there's only so many times even I can tell that one!) before they opened the doors. When we went to properly form a line they asked us to move back because they had been there for (much, much) longer, which was fair enough, so we moved further back and stood next to two girls and a guy from WA. One of the guys had a camera so he asked for our emails to send the photos to once we got inside. We all just fitted on the barrier - we were at the very left facing the stage. The support act, Cut Copy, were quite late so we had to find things to amuse ourselves, like mental arithmetic :) I finally managed to figure that 1.3 squared is 1.69. Cut Copy finally came on half an hour late, at 9.15, and they were OK, although I'm not a fan of electronic music, it all sounds the same to me. I brought earplugs with the intention of using them, but took them out in frustration before Cut Copy's set started because they're so damn uncomfortable. So my hearing suffers yet again :) Luckily the break between Cut Copy and Franz Ferdinand (oooo, band alliteration!) was quite short so we weren't kept in suspense long. One of the photographers in front of us took a photo of the set list and showed it to us, so I learned that 'Do You Want To' would be the first song on the list. And what a first song! From the moment Franz Ferdinand stepped onto the stage they blew me away. Not only are they great musicians, they're awesome performers as well and they know what gets a crowd going.

So onto my big story for tonight...

Because of where we were standing, we were right in front of Nick McCarthy, the guitarist, and at one point during a song he came right up to the edge of the stage and smiled directly at me. Now maybe a cooler person under these circumstances may have just smiled back or winked flirtatiously, I don't know, but I'm a complete loser, so instead of being all cool, I grinned back, said 'hello!' and gave him a little wave. Groan indeed. Even I agreed that I'd been a dork when the guy next to me mimicked me after the song. BUT. Apparently the dork act did something for Mr McCarthy, because....

(this needs its own paragraph)

A few songs later - it may have been Take Me Out but I can't remember now - Nick once again came right to the edge of the stage, but this time he jumped down (the Palace stage is quite low and close to the barriers), came right up to me, said 'hello' back and....he kissed me on the cheek!!!! I can't believe it. Nothing like that *ever* happens to me! The girl behidn my brother asked if Nick knew us. No, I was just my usual dorky self, and in some weird and wonderful way, it paid off completely. And best of all, one of the guys from WA who we made friends with and stood next to inside got the whole thing on video and will email it to me, so I can watch it again...and again...and again...

So yes, a marvellous fabulous wonderful stupendously rockin' night was had by all. And now I have a new, equally cool and awesome Franz Ferdinand story to tell!

I'm so lucky, lucky lucky.

Indeed.

-R

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

heya bobby,
even though you're sitting right next to me right now i wanted to be the first person to comment on your story. maybe others will follow my lead...
what an awesome story, you should so be a writer instead of wasting your life doing an arts degree. no doubt i will hear this story lots and lots more times and hopefully i will never get bored :) and if the guy that took the video happens to read this THEN SEND THE DAMN VIDEO AND WE CAN ALL MOVE ON!!!