Member's Concert Review: Arcade Fire

BPD member 2s On sent us this review:

In a move that sparked a combination of backlash, excitement and confusion, the band asked show attendees on this leg of their tour to arrive in formal attire or a costume. About a third to half of the audience obliged, and my buds and I were peppered with girls in sparkling silver pants, guys in suits, and all manner of costumes, from Christmas elves to dancers from "What Does the Fox Say?" It was a throwback to the band's small venue gigs last September, taped for the world to see in a concert documentary that ran after the season premiere of SNL, and a testament to the their ability to create an aesthetic (or is it a brand?) for their music.

The band took the stage wearing the same white disco suits and face paint that they donned in the "Reflektor" music video, flanked by large, fragmented mirrors and multicoloured lights. They were joined by several extra musicians, including two percussionists, two saxophonists and Owen Pallett on violin and keys.

After a short excerpt from "My Body is a Cage," they they kicked into a set that emphasized the new album, Reflektor, and their debut LP, Funeral. The only other Neon Bible song that raised its head was "No Cars Go," originally written for their self-titled EP. Their coverage of The Suburbs was limited to the big numbers: "Ready to Start," "The Suburbs" and "Rococo," with Win Butler singing Miley Cyrus's "Wrecking Ball" over the opening chords. "Sprawl II" served as a perfectly chosen, upbeat set closer.

The show empathized a combination of band's new material and their old, road-tested fan favourites. Songs like "Reflektor" and "We Exist" sparked dancing from the crowd, and anthems like "Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)" and "Wake Up" took on a whole new scope in a big arena. The added instruments also allowed the band to reinterpret songs such as "Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)," which began with a steel drum solo.

At one point, Win Butler pointed to the back of the general admission crush and told the people there to start dancing. "There are so many pretty girls here," he said. "Ask a pretty girl to dance with you!" A dance party ensued and lasted for the rest of the set; fans in the stands swayed and watched.

Keeping with the exclusive nightclub theme, attendees with BPD passes were treated to a red carpet upon entering and had access to the Platinum Club area which was the band hung out pre and post-show. They even performed an acoustic mini-set just for us.

What more can I say. BPD delivered!!

Coachella Setlists: Arcade Fire and Kanye West

Just back from Coachella, BPD member Joachim21 sends in these setlists for Arcade Fire and Kanye West:

AF

Month of May
Rebellion (Lies)
No Cars Go
Haïti
City With No Children
The Suburbs
The Suburbs (Continued)
Crown of Love
Rococo
Intervention
Neighborhood #2 (Laika)
We Used to Wait
Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)
Keep the Car Running
Wake Up
Encore:
Ready to Start
Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)
Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)

KW

Dark Fantasy (with Justin Vernon)
Power
Jesus Walks
Can't Tell Me Nothing
Diamonds from Sierra Leone
Hell of a Life
Monster (with Justin Vernon)
Flashing Lights
Good Life (With "P.Y.T." by Michael Jackson intro)
Love Lockdown (With "Sirius" by The Alans Parsons Project intro)
Say You Will
Heartless
Swagger Like Us (Jay-Z cover)
Run This Town (Jay-Z cover)
E.T. (Katy Perry cover) (With "We Will Rock You" by Queen intro)
Homecoming
Through The Wire
All Falls Down
Touch The Sky
Gold Digger
All of the Lights
Stronger
Runaway (with Pusha T)
Lost in the World (with Justin Vernon)
Hey, Mama

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Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival 2011

In partnership with the San Francisco Recreation and Park Departmant, this year's Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival is scheduled for Aug. 12-14 at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. It's three days of music headlined by Muse, Phish and Arcade Fire.

This year’s lineup also includes The Black Keys, Deadmau5, MGMT, Beirut, Girl Talk, The Decemberist, Arctic Monkeys, The Original Meters, John Fogerty, Erykah Badu, Big Audio Dynamite, STS9, The Roots, Warren Haynes Band, Mavis Staples, Big Boi and Major Lazer.

Passes will be single day only. Request yours today.

Bonnaroo 2011 Lineup

This year, it's Eminem, Arcade Fire, Widespread Panic, The Black Keys, Robert Plant & Band Of Joy, Lil’ Wayne and Buffalo Springfield among the bands and artists appearing at this year’s Bonnaroo Music Festival.

The complete list is quite impressive. At the time of this writing, no day-to-day lineups or stage assignments have been revealed.

Bonnaroo was in last year's Top Ten requests and we don't expect it to be any different this year. So, make your requests to BackstagePassDirect now!

Coachella 12

The Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival has unleashed its artist lineup for No. 12.

Happening April 15-17 at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, Calif., headliners include Arcade Fire, Kanye West and Kings of Leon plus an almost endless list of artists and bands including a re-formed Big Audio Dynamite.

With Kings Of Leon topping the Friday, April 15 bill, other first-day acts include The Black Keys, Interpol, The Chemical Brothers, Caifanes, Robyn, Sasha, Ms. Lauryn Hill, Brandon Flowers, Crystal Castles and Magnetic Man.

Along with Arcade Fire’s Saturday, April 16 performance the second-day list includes Animal Collective, Mumford & Sons, Bright Eyes, Empire Of The Sun, Big Audio Dynamite, Steve Angello, the Kills, London Suede, Broken Social Scene, One Day As A Lion, Erykah Badu and Paul van Dyk.

Sunday’s lineup has Kanye West closing after a day of performances by The Strokes, Duran Duran, The National, P.J. Harvey, Death From Above 1979, Wiz Khalifa, Ratatat, Nas & Damian Marley, Jimmy Eat World, Axwell, Sven Vath and The Bloody Beetroots.

These acts are only the short list as the lineup goes deeper each day, listing performances by such notables as Flogging Molly and Ozomatli (Friday), Scissor Sisters, The New Pornographers and Gogol Bordello (Saturday) and Chromeo, Duck Sauce, She Wants Revenge, and Jack’s Mannequin (Sunday). Plus tons more.

We'll have a limited number of passes for individual days. When you make your requests, please include the day you'd like to be backstage.

Members Review Lollapalooza

The following is a compilation of mini-reports send to us from several BPD members who spent 3 days @Lollapalooza:

The Black Keys duo of guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney forged their reputation with a spare but potent Led Zeppelin-meets-White Stripes sound that was tailor-made for their compact blues-rock tunes. Those songs framed the hour set, but the highlight came in the middle when they brought out a bass player and keyboardist to flesh out the material from their terrific new Brothers album. That album embraces elements of R&B and psychedelia in addition to blues-rock, and songs like She's Long Gone, Ten Cent Pistol and Next Girl benefited from the fuller instrumentation.

Newly established stars Arcade Fire confidently opened their headlining set on Sunday night with Ready To Start from their just-released The Suburbs album — and found that many in the crowd already knew the lyrics. They followed with tunes from their first albums, including No Cars Go, giving their dueling violinists and accordion player a workout. The delicate Rococo from Suburbs found frontman Win Butler strumming an acoustic and singing in a Neil Young-inflected voice. The crowd wanted anthems, however, and the Canadian ensemble obliged with Neighborhood (Tunnels). Butler dedicated the majestic Crown of Love to The National, with whom they toured and who preceded them on the Lollapalooza bill.

Green Day's 2½-hour set Saturday was more off-Broadway than punk rock, unsurprising since its music has long been tinged with pop and theatrics. Hits from the two-decade-deep repertoire shared the set list with two medleys of rock classics (including Hey Jude, Iron Man, Highway to Hell and Satisfaction) — all punctuated by fireworks and jets of flame. Frontman Billie Joe Armstrong led the proceedings effortlessly, from openers Song of the Century and 21st Century Breakdown through the extended encore, highlighted by American Idiot and Good Riddance (Time of Your Life). The feel-good ending sent the set 15 minutes over the city's strict 10 p.m. curfew, but no one, least of all Armstrong, seemed to care.

In America, the compelling dance songs of French quartet Phoenix are often used to pump up sales of cars and viewership of movies and TV shows. Saturday night they were even more effective in pumping up tens of thousands of their adoring fans, who looked to be mostly electrified young women. Vocalist Thomas Mars and mates delivered most of their keyboard-driven pop-rock hits (the bulk from last year's Grammy-winning Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart) in a brisk smart show that never lagged. Though they're devilishly handsome, the band members attended to business and didn't waste time preening (Mars did wade into the crowd near the end, however). The band had been slotted to play for 90 minutes but left the stage after just 55. Before jokes about the French work ethic could circulate, however, they reappeared and delivered a three-encore bonbon: an acoustic version of Air's Playground Love; an older dance number, If I Ever Feel Better; and of course a joyous 1901.
 
Austin-based Spoon, slotted at 6:15 p.m. on one of the main stages, may be the ideal pre-sundown band. They rock, mildly and wittily, and engage in a roughly equal number of detours into pop sweetness and distorted vocal and guitar effects. Leader Britt Daniel has a boyish, beach-boy look and an earnest voice that's best suited to delivering emotional lyrics, and the band sounds neither angry nor mellow, hovering mostly in the moderately anguished realm.

During their 75-minute set the quartet sounded most engaging when augmented by a horn section, on songs like You Got Your Cherry Bomb, Jonathon Fisk and The Underdog. On one of the more intricate numbers, My Mathematical Mind, Daniel sank to his knees and held his guitar in front of an amp a la Hendrix, but wound up in an echo-laden cul de sac. The set list spanned 1998s A Series of Sneaks (Advance Cassette) and the new Transference (Written in Reverse and Got Nuffin'), hitting emotional peaks with I Summon You and Don't Make Me a Target. The audience, mellowed by another day of perfect conditions, was more inclined toward swaying than fist-pumping, and Spoon fed the mood deftly.

What's left for Lady Gaga to reveal? By the end of her two-hour, 18-song, epic performance Friday, she had laid it all out on the stage — her beliefs, her multitude of musical influences, her skin, her brazen vulgarity, her athleticism and her soul. The staging of the story line — Lady leads her troupe on a nightmarish journey to a Monster's Ball— was over the top and well-choreographed, and it projected well in the vast outdoor setting. But it was the few quieter moments that surprised the most. Sitting at the keyboard for Speechless and the new You and I from her in-the-works album, she revealed a lusty, more-than-serviceable voice reminiscent of the saloon-singing style of Billy Joel. Some may also have been surprised by the heavy-metal influences that augment the David Bowie-esque glam in songs such as Fame and Boys Boys Boys. But by the time of closer Bad Romance, surprise had given way to awe.

Not everyone was caught up in Gaga mania, though it may have seemed that way. New York indie rockers The Strokes, reunited after being on unofficial hiatus since 2006, drew a respectable crowed to the north end of Grant Park at the same time Gaga commanded the south end. Their set drew heavily from their 2001 debut This Is it. They opened with New York City Cops, a song that was pulled from that debut just before its release. "I think they sound great," says Ryan Labery, 31, of Chicago. "I stopped by Gaga to see the spectacle, but I had to come back to The Strokes." 

Apparently, the thing to do was to toggle back and forth between the back and the front. Regardless, BPD members had one hoot of a time.

Join us today and you can too!