We are now into 2010, and thinking back on 2009 it really was one of the best years that I can remember. It was full of amazing experiences which I will never forget from my first skydive to the summer of a lifetime travelling around America and Canada.
I decided to make this video as a summary of the year to remember all those experiences. I now challenge 2010 to better 2009!
Following on from the last post about Barcelona, I will now write about the main reason I was there: to see U2. I decided to see them in Barcelona because I wasn’t going to be able to see them play Dublin as I’m in America. I figured I might as well take the opportunity while I had it and see them in another country. Barcelona was the first night of the tour and they would be playing the Nou Camp, this was bound to be an awesome show and they certainly didn’t disappoint!
Read on for more about it with pictures, including the newspaper article I ended up in!
As I’m sure you can tell, I’ve been trying to get to as many gigs as I can recently. I figure I might as well take advantage of the Dublin music scene while I can! The most recent gig was Feeder.
This was very much a last minute booking, I didn’t realise how close it was until I checked out Ticketmaster on Friday night only to discover it was the next Thursday, so I was straight in to book them on the Saturday.
I was looking forward to this gig after hearing a lot of people telling me how good they are live, and they really were.
The Chemists were supporting, but nobody I spoke to had heard of them so I just had to hope that they would be good and they too were brilliant. Unfortunately they haven’t got an album out yet, it looks like it’s going to be released at some point in 2009 so I can’t wait for that after seeing them live. They had a real stage presence and I really liked all the tracks they performed. Keep an eye out for these guys! It was great to get to chat to the lead singer and one of the guitarists afterwards (even if they struggled to understand my accent).
Feeder themselves were fantastic and put on such a show. It had a good mix of older tracks and tracks from the new album. Of course all the classics such as ‘Buck Rodgers‘ had the crowd going wild and ending with ‘Just A Day‘ was the best way they could’ve ever ended, especially since the crowd were literally shouting out for them to sing it when they came back for the encore!
The atmosphere was amazing, the crowd seemed to be loving it and the band looked to be having a good time as well, but how could they not with the crowd chanting ‘FEEDER FEEDER FEEDER FEEDER’ in between pretty much every song!
This gig really was one of the best gigs I’ve ever been to. It left we really wanting to go to Belfast and see them the next night, but I doubt it could’ve ever lived up to Dublin. To top it all off I managed to catch one of the drumsticks that was thrown out at the end 
Here are some photos from the gig (including the drumstick I got):
I recently went to see Death Cab For Cutie in the Ambassador Theatre in Dublin. I’ve been listening to them a lot recently, climbing to number 2 in my Last FM top artists, so I was really looking forward to this gig and I wasn’t disappointed.
The support act was Frightened Rabbit who I had only heard of about a week before the gig. These guys were very good and really got the crowd warmed up.
The highlight of the night would have to be ‘I Will Follow You Into the Dark‘. This is a completely stripped back track with just acoustic guitar and vocals which was brilliant live.
Here are some photos:
After a friend recommended British Sea Power to me I listened to their album ‘Do You Like Rock Music?‘ which I liked straight away, so decided to book to see them live in Dublin.
The gig was in the Academy, a small enough venue, but just the right size for something like this. We ended up being first in because we headed there straight from work, it gave us plenty of time to relax before the support act came on.
The support was a band called New Amusements. They were decent enough, I’ll have to check out their mini-album some time.
After New Amusements left the stage, everybody started to move towards the stage so we got down quickly to get a good spot, ending up at the very front, right in the middle, great 
British Sea Power themselves were quite good, however it did take them a bit to really get into it. I got the feeling the crowd didn’t seem to ‘feel’ it much for some reason, though. For what I could see, not a lot of people seemed to be getting into it. I can understand people not being too much into it at the beginning, but as the songs went on and BSP started to find their feet a bit better I would’ve expected the crowd to take this all in, I know I was anyway!
My favourite songs from the night would have to be my favourites from the album: Waving Flags, No Lucifer and Canvey Island. The last song was also brilliant, it just felt like a big long jam. During this one Noble also decided to dive into the crowd with a roll of duct tape and ended up with his legs taped together.
Despite taking a bit for them to fully get into the gig, I thought BSP were brilliant and would definately see them again if they’re playing anywhere close to me.
Here’s some photos I took:
