Best Operation: Hot Webster

The internet seems to be full of reviews of this week's two Bloc Party shows at Webster Hall and no one is happy that the shows were at Webster Hall but they all liked Bloc Party. Let me say that, while Webster Hall was really, really hot and sweaty and drippy and it does seem that the floor might collapse someday and leaving the venue always verges on being a panic-inducing experience and you can totally tell that it's more of a place for bridge and tunnel dance parties, Webster Hall IS right by M2M, the city's absolute best convenience store. That almost makes up for everything wrong with the venue. And, little story here, one time I went to the M2M and bought a rootbeer and the guy at the register asked to see my ID.

Anyway, Bloc Party was great, of course. My one word concert review? "The Band was: Charasmatic" If you've seen them before, then you know what I mean. The whole band (particularly the frontman, of course, who's name I don't know, of course) send off a very welcoming, "let's have fun" vibe. Were the whole audience not about to pass out from the heat inside Webster Hall, we probably would have returned a lot more of the love.



I spent all week trying to better familiarize myself with the Bloc Party catalogue, but I was still reduced to thinking: "Oh, hey . . . it's that one song . . . no, wait, my bad, this is that other song . . . man I like this song!" throughout the set.



You might be thinking, "Gosh, Brig, for a band that's supposed to be so great, you sure didn't take that many photos." Exactly. The show was so good that I decided I'd rather not be trying to get the best pictures I could the whole time. Besides, if you want pictures of Bloc Party, it's not like the Cobra Snake has anything besides pictures of Bloc Party playing.





During the encore the back of the stage lit up like stars. Which is fitting, as lots of Bloc Party's songs sound like they could be played against a backdrop of stars.



Also, the opening act that we caught, the Engineers (I think), they weren't bad at all. And they played a set of absolutely perfect length, like 22 minutes or something. They were a little bit like the droney Ambulance Ltd. stuff, but just a little bit.