Mountains + The Arcade Fire = Pure Awesome

03May07

Yesterday was the date of the fateful show of The Arcade Fire at the civic center in Asheville. Man was it great. Make sure to click on any of the pictures in this post to go to Justin’s Flickr, where the rest of the set resides. We took a whole day of driving through the mountains, first going to check out my friend Justin’s summer workplace in Pisgah national forest. The place is called PARI (Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute) Their Website, which was pretty much an onservatory in the mountains, with the huge radio telescopes like you see in the movies. We got a nice tour of the facilities and learned about what they do and so forth. Apparently the place used to be a Department o Defense base back in the days of the cold war, and up until recently “didn’t exist.” It had that cold war vibe to it too, it was very recessed in the mountains, and had that 1960’s-70’s military base look. There was a dish named “smiley,” that had a smiley face painted on it. It was hilarious.

After a tour of the facilities we set out to Asheville, and for a scenic route we drove through the Blue Ridge Parkway to get there. Man was it beautiful, we took various stops at different overlooks and took a few pictures, a lot being pretty good. I didn’t have my camera with me, but Justin’s was pretty sweet. It had an overlay visualizing the lines you use in the “rule of thirds” (very popular photographic composition tool).

After awe-ing in the beauty of the mountains for a while, we got to Asheville and enjoyed some good food, pizza, and beer at Barley’s in Asheville. Then it was time for the show.

The show was awesome, the opening band was actually pretty good. They had a really good drummer. I’ll have to check them out some more later, they’re called “The National.” During the intermission we whored ourselves to some T-shirts and poster propaganda. But it’s ok, because The Arcade Fire deserved our money, and I owe them for the CDs I downloaded. Their set was fantastic, they had a variety of instruments including a hurdey gurdy, a double bass, sax, violins, french horn, a pipe organ, etc. They never played the same instrument twice, they played musical chairs with instruments. Except the violinists, who played those throughout. They played the video being taken on stage on these boxes that resemble old fashioned view cameras, where the photographer would huddle under the curtain behind it. The video had a filter on it to make it look vintage and 1920’s esque. They also had megaphones set up for the band, with a camera up on the side of it set to look at the band members as they screamed their heart out into the megaphone. Awesome show, I’ll definetly make plans to see them again.

After the show we set out with people we knew from Asheville to the Parkway again to gaze at the mountains beauty in moonlight, and a perfect occasion too, since it was almost a full moon. It was great, we hung out for about an hour, then set back. Made it back to the apartment by 4am.

All this in less than 17 hours, it was like a vacation packed into a day. And man did I need it, crap has been piling up lately and I needed the escape. Now I just can’t wait to see Tool in June.

UPDATE: I was perusing Flickr and found some awesome pics of the band from the show from a guy named Brian Vetter. Check them out, they’re pretty damn good. http://flickr.com/photos/oldking/sets/72157600174414274/