THE VACCINES

At long last -- The Vaccines!
Next stop is hopefully: Noah and the Whale, then Arcade Fire.
The KITEC Auditorium provided a much more homey -- if you will --
environment than the grand Asia World Expo. A modest number of
seats, and far more intimate. Although we had assigned seats, when
the band began playing everyone naturally scrambled to the front.
By luck, my friends and I scored the second row! The first band (DP)
was very loud and went on for an hour. The drummer (right) is quite
the eccentric and afterwards waved at me with his water bottle. Funny guys.
Thought it would take an age for The Vaccines to debut. The people
setting up the stage were taking their sweet time.

Suddenly, one in particular taped the set list to the ground, and there was the rushed, stretch-armed scramble to snap a photo (left). Family Friend will be played, thank the lord. In contrast to earlier predictions, Blow It Up was their opening song. Cutting off the last two encores, they ended with Family Friend which was perfect.
The entire concert was a dream. Justin was literally in front of me but elevated and then the atmosphere got too murderous to attempt taking photos. Practically shoved the girl in front of my half to death. Love the way Justin sings -- he dilates his eyes for emphasis and swerves around the stage. Everyone was pushing, hurtling, ramming; but, wow, what a concert! Wetsuit, Lack of Understanding, Wreckin' Bar, Norgaard, Post Break Up Sex... the song choice was spectacular. Shame they played it all too fast without pauses in between to register. But then I supposed they had a time limit. At the end, the band threw drumsticks in the air for catching -- it was a 7 person scramble and we emerged victorious (although I was more of a bystander). Ended the night spectacularly -- got to meet them! Meet the Vaccines! One of my favourite bands! It was magic. Ami is real witty, funny guy; "oh that's what you meant by the 5th month" (when he was writing my name down to sign. We saw him drawing an elephant earlier -- why...) and to Justin -- "I really love Family Friend", "Oh thank you, thank you" -- and telling Freddie the lamest line I've always dreamed of using -- "If you wanna come back to Hong Kong, it's alright," and him saying to me: "That's really clever!"

So, all in all -- a wonderful night with a phenomenal band.