Arcade Fire: Front Row

Walking up to the gates for the Arcade Fire concert in Charlottesville, VA, my friend Taylor and I were confused as to why nobody was in line with only 10 minutes before gates open. Our cab driver apparently dropped us off at the second entrance, which nobody knew about! We were now first in line for the concert...unbelievable. Taylor and I had been talking about how amazing the show was going to be and joked about the idea of being front row. The ticket lady got a call on her radio to start letting people in, so she then checked out tickets and let us in. We said we weren't going to be "those fans" that would sprint to the stage, but from the other gate we could see people running so incredibly fast to the stage. We immediately turned into the full fledged "crazed fan" mentality and began sprinting towards the stage. I felt like I was in a movie because the vendors along the street we had to run on to get to the stage started cheering for Taylor and I yelling, "run run!!" We rounded the corner, saw the stage, saw that the front row railing was open and we started yelling about god knows what. Legitimately turned into super fans and went crazy over the fact that we were going to be front row for Arcade Fire.

The opening band, Bowerbirds, came on and if it wasn't for the fact that all I wanted to do at that point was get out of the 97° heat and humidity or see Arcade Fire performing, I'm sure I would have enjoyed them more. Soon Arcade Fire came on the stage and the crowd of 4,000 people went wild! They opened with Ready to Start, and continued with this set list...
The most amazing part about the show to me was that the band was all so versatile. Win Butler, the lead singer, played the guitar, mandolin, and the drums. His wife and band-mate, Regine played the drums, sang, played this weird organ grinder thing featured in keep the car running and played the keyboard.

The encore however was the most impressive part of their show. They came back on stage and immediately went into playing, Wake Up. The crowd was singing every word at the top of their lungs, and it blew me away that so many people loved this band so much, and I can only imagine how that feels as the band to have 4,000 people singing your song back to you. The last song was Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains) which features Regine. She was amazing, and an even better dancer. At the end of the song she took these handfuls of long neon ribbons and started to dance around with them. Somehow for it being such a small addition to the show, that made the song one of my new favorites.

Needless to say, this is the only way I want to experience concerts now; front row. That is near to impossible, but it made the show 100 times better being that close to the band. I felt like part of the concert.