On Fire

I watched Arcade Fire live from Madison Square Garden during lunch today, it was brilliant. The gig was streamed live on Youtube and directed by Terry Gilliam. Apart from the odd drop out and buffering issues, the quality was very high (1500kb) and the new stuff sounded very good (even Sprawl, a new one that they restarted after the drum machine started playing up during the first minute).

It won't be long before slight improvements in technology make quality issues and drops out a thing of the past, and I reckon that's when you'll see Sky Sports style pay-per-view tickets being sold. Watching it live on a screen wasn't half as good as being down the front, but it was almost as good as being up the back, albeit in a different way. When you're up the back of the big venues you get the vibe but not much sense of what's actually going on, other than what song they're playing. With this there were cameras all over the shop and when he went walkabout in the crowd during We Used To Wait there were cameras on him the whole time.

It don't seem too much of a stretch to think of a time when, like the premier League, going to 'premier' gigs is for rich folk (if it ain't already…) and normal folk and kids in the suburbs (see what I did there…) will spend their money on a TV ticket.

Might only work with huge bands, as the cost is obviously prohibitive and you'd need five figure ticket sales, but if Arcade Fire (or whoever) were playing in Manchester on a Thursday night and you weren't going out, you'd go what, a fiver, to watch it streamed live? How much is it for a pelt rom-com on Sky Box Office? If it had been Oasis in the mid-90s we'd have gone in a quid each, gathered round Dave's with cans of Strongbow and watched it before tearing off down the Ave at the mercy of our hormones.

The gig itself was a cracker, highlight being Power Out straight into Rebellion followed by Month Of May, Keep The Car Running then Tunnels. It was weird sitting at my desk getting goose bumps and wanting to down a pint and go mental. The goose bumps bit I mean. I quite often sit at my desk wanting to down a pint and go mental.