Let’s get one thing straight. I love Broken Social Scene with a passion I reserve mostly for things other than music — you know, food, water, the like — and a chance to see them perform a mere four(!) hours away, in Salt Lake City, Utah was something I didn’t care to pass up. After learning of the concert via an IRC friend (I call this Music Geek for a reason, after all) I set out to find a way, rain or shine, money or, well, broke.
Read after the jump for video of Broken Social Scene at Lollapalooza 2008.
Luck dropped in my lap: A co-worker and friend — we’ll call him Eric, as that’s his name — was interested in making the trek up to the area of his home town for the concert. I’d converted him to BSS some time before, so I found myself in a fairly fortuitous situation. Thus, the trip was underway. My head, swimming in the glee it conjured up, wasn’t quite prepared for what I would get from the Canadian indie-rockers.
We’d arrived maybe 10 minutes before Broken Social Scene was set to come on: Fortuitous, again! Opening with “KC Accidental,” the band I’d fantasized about seeing for some time provided something distinctly different from their recorded sound. Sure, this was definitely Broken Social Scene, there was no mistaking that. Still, there was a refreshing bounce, an action-oriented sense of urgency in their post-rock-inflected sound; it was this that separated the experiences. It’s not like I could really say seeing the band was the big difference, as for at least half the time, I could the head of Brendan Canning, and that was about it. Being short has its downsides — but it’s not like I’m that short.
The most puzzling thing? Not that I couldn’t tell quite where the drummer was located, but the fact that a section of the crowd had for some reason been devoted to that annoying slam-dance moshing. Really? Yes. It was… weird.
But the music — oh, the music! From the aforementioned “KC Accidental” to “I’m Still Your Fag,” from “Cause = Time” to Kevin Drew’s “Fucked Up Kid,” there was little to complain about. Tracks from the self-titled Broken Social Scene were injected with new life, with the vocals taking a new priority in the live mix; “Fire Eyed Boy” was turned from a track I often regarded as too dense and thick in the mix to a stellar piece of pop music — and as a result, I can listen to the recorded track much more easily. Funny how that happens, isn’t it?
All told, Broken Social Scene put on a performance for a mostly savvy Salt Lake City crowd; despite the slight nonsense with the moshing, fans of the band have been reaffirmed in their dedication, and the new recruits will have been given the best introduction possible to this unmistakably amazing group.
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUMKD-7K05k
Once again, I reiterate my complete jealousy at this turn of events.
People moshed to Broken Social Scene? …Wow…