Breaking Culture News

This is a dispatch from Ottawa,ON,Canada as the indie rock band "Arcade Fire" played there first show in almost 14 months tonight in a almost unlikely venue Canterbury High School in Ottawa that where member Richard Reed Parry when to school there as a wram up for a series of sold out show in aptipapatcie for the new album "Neon Bible" which is out all over March 6th.

CBC Radio 3 Michael Barclay was embedded with the band and filed this report on the CBC radio 3 websight tonight at 8:07 PM

Link to the report and the report on CBC Radio 3 tonight with Radio 3 DJ Grant Lawrence

Nothing’s Hid from Us Kids
Posted by Michael Barclay at 8:07 PM

Smells like teen spirit, indeed. Specifically, the unmistakable stench of teenage boy. This is, after all, a high school cafeteria.

But it’s also the site of the first Arcade Fire show in 14 months, the first time anyone outside their immediate circle of friends has heard their new material, the first time they’ve played in front of an audience since they opened for U2 at the Bell Centre in their hometown of Montreal.

The opening act is one of the strangest I’ve ever seen: a school administrator, who reminds the audience how lucky they are to go to such a prestigious arts school. Frankly, his flow was a bit stilted, and had too many shout-outs. After a few words from the head of the alumni committee, the Arcade Fire take the stage, decked out in spiffy new stage threads and more than a tad nervous about the first public performance of Neon Bible.

Unfortunately, the set is plagued with sound troubles, feedback and uncooperative instruments. Not that anyone there cares, or has even seen enough shows to know the difference. The band is excited to be playing again, and the kids—well, the kids are excited by everything. There’s lots of pogo-ing, lots of hippie dancing, lots of friendly crowd surfing, and lots of screaming anytime there’s an obvious crescendo—or decrescendo, or anything worth screaming about. It’s so easy to forget the innocent joy of first love, first concerts—and of course, the first time a world famous band comes to play your high school cafeteria.

No wonder the Arcade Fire wanted this kind of audience. If they played anywhere else, there’d be far too many people stroking their chins and deciding whether or not the new material held up to Funeral.

And for the record, it is. Again, the sound trouble made it hard to make out any lyrics or any musical subtleties—like the sacrificial string section, for example. But the strength of new songs like the political “Windowsill,” the propulsive “The Well and the Lighthouse,” and the triumphant single “Intervention” were all obvious to even the tone deaf.

Making up for the bad sound is the fact that the venue is far from oversold. Though 400 tickets were sold—available only to students and alumni—the cafeteria is spacious, not at all stuffed. That gives the teachers plenty of room to roam and try in vain to stifle the legions of amateur photographers determined to preserve the event. One mild-mannered older teacher politely asks me if I’ll delete my photos later that evening.

I told him that of course I would. Except, of course, for the one you see above of Richard Reed Parry, the arcade fire member who attended Canterbury High School.