Terminal 5

Alex Winston

MSMR

The crowd

Grouplove

Clean up afterwards

On Wednesday I went to a concert at Terminal 5, on the west side. It's quite far though, since the closest subway stops are still four avenues away, about a 20 minute walk. I've been to two concerts there, both for artists that I did not know, and tickets that I did not pay for. The first was James Blake, the second was Grouplove.

I was at work when a friend of mine from law school asked me if I wanted a pair of free concert tickets to Grouplove. I had never heard of the band, and at first thought it was some compilation of artists, but I said yes because I like live music and usually enjoy most concerts that I have gone to. It turned out that it's a fairly famous group, and the tickets were completely sold out. Since I didn't buy the tickets myself, I was confused about the starting time, and ended up arriving an hour before the concert started. As a result, we got to stand very close to the stage. As a short person, I find venues with general admission can be difficult because there is always the possibility that some tall person stands in front of me. At the height of 5'3", most adults are tall people to me.

The crowd seemed a bit younger (high school perhaps), including a large group of girls who flew in from Australia who kept trying to run backstage. Someone also threw a bra at the stage, but missed and it fell around the photographers. I kept thinking someone should really pick it up and throw it on stage for her (or perhaps him), since they put so much effort into throwing it that it's too bad their message didn't get through. Another person threw a sweatshirt onto the stage, but it was quickly picked up by a stage manager and taken away. At the end the band threw pieces of crumpled paper into the crowd (I'm not sure if that was meant for people to catch, or what), and one jumped in and crowd surfed for a few minutes.

I was pleasantly surprised--I really enjoyed the entire concert, and ended up with a lot of new songs to add to my playlist. The opening bands, MS MR and Alex Winston, were really good as well. Later when I listened to mp3s of the songs that I had heard I found that the live version was much better, simply because the artists put so much energy into their performance. The show was actually filmed live for release on DVD, so perhaps there will be a screen with me in it. I was really tired from work, and wearing my arctic grade jacket because it was so cold in the venue.