Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

Last night, livredor and I went to the VNV Nation show here in New York. (I was going to write "saw," but we're both short enough that it was much more "heard" and "danced to" than "saw," though Ronan's bouncing around on stage made him pretty visible.

This is not really a concert review (rysmiel wrote a good review of their concert in Montreal earlier in the week), so no attempt at a set list. But we did get one song that he said they'd never done live before, and therefore he had cue cards for: "Stillwater," which he wanted to do in New York because he wrote it in lower Manhattan.

Taking rysmiel's advice, we sat in a lounge area for both opening acts and saved our energy for VNV Nation. (We were near the actual concert space, and there were video screens, so if we'd disagreed with his opinion we could have changed our minds.) Instead, we sat, talked a little, and looked at people: there was a wide range, from seriously dressed-up goths to punk to band t-shirt and jeans. I was in a purple tank top--show off the tattoos--and black pants, figuring I don't have goth clothes or care enough, but could get the colors right. Liv's host had managed to get her up as a goth despite not being one. The band did a mix of material, and a long show. Near the end of the main performance, it felt short. Then they gave us three encores. Before starting the third encore, Ronan said that when they were done, this encore would make it the longest show so far this tour.

Ronan did some working the crowd that I didn't entirely like: urging us to sing along, cool. Saying "I can't hear you," not so cool. (My throat was too tight for much noise, though I was happy to clap and wave my hands and jump in the air.) But it works, and it's part of the show. At one point, he said he wanted to see us dancing "unless you have a medical excuse" and I was thinking I did have a medical excuse (knees not quite recovered from earlier in the summer) and wasn't letting that stop me. Slow me down a bit, yes: I swayed more, and jumped less, than I otherwise would have. And then, near the very end, having spent the show not singing along because it wasn't sensible, I joined in shouting back lines from "Judgement."

One unfortunate thing: either Ronan's voice was going, or the people running the sound board didn't do a good job, and the instruments (and crowd noise) overwhelmed the vocals.

You're never too old to rock and roll, but I'm starting to feel a bit creaky for this form of it. Or maybe it's the combination of timing—I bought our tickets before I hurt my knees—and timescale. It was fun in the moment, but I was fretting a little by the end of the evening that I might have overdone it. But the walk home from the train was fine, and my feet, which felt a little tender from all that bouncing, didn't hurt at all this morning, nor did my knees. And either they used more strobe than last concert, or my sensitivity to strobes was higher than last time (it seems to vary somewhat, non-monotonically).

This was also a nice chance to catch up with Liv. Our friendship has been almost entirely electronic (we've never lived on the same continent, and she's been in Sweden for the last three years), and it was nice to sit together over tea and on an A train and to be dancing in the same place ("together" doesn't apply in the usual sense: in the only way it does, we were both dancing together with hundreds of strangers). She was delighted by my going ahead and doing the organizational work here, both getting her ticket and mine while she was in Sweden, and picking a place for dinner last night (Excellent Dumpling; I'm not aiming for dinner in Times Square at that hour on a Saturday night, even if I were still familiar with the area).

When cattitude came upstairs with the mail today, he said "I've got you a present."

He had tracked down a copy of the (second edition of) the first VNV Nation album, Advance and Follow. I gather this was a time-consuming process--I'd originally suggested this as a birthday present, back in November, and eventually concluded that he wouldn't find one at any sane price, so he got me a fine pair of ammonite earrings.

I waited until he'd had his afternoon nap to play it. From one listening, I like it, but it hasn't yet oozed into my brain the way Empires has. The sound is rather different from that, and certainly from Judgment. Another listen later, but right now Cattitude has Idiot's Delight on while he cooks.

This was the first time I've seen VNV Nation live (and the first live rock show I'd been to in several years, somehow). I was thinking "concert" when I bought this ticket, though Irving Plaza is a "no seating" venue, so you either stand on the dance floor, or line the balcony and stand more quietly. I was down on the dance floor, but it was crowded enough that I found myself periodically jumping up and down, then landing a few inches off of where I'd meant and either crowding into someone or getting my feet tangled.

I had fun, but less than I'd expected: a lot of what I like about VNV Nation is the lyrics, which in the live show were often covered by the instruments. (I have the feeling that much of the crowd could have sung along to the entire thing, not just the songs the band asked us to, so it mattered less to them.) If I do this again—and I may, the next time they tour—I'll time things to arrive during the opening act, not well before, to save my energy for dancing to VNV Nation. I also think I would have enjoyed myself more if I'd pre-ordered the album the tour is supporting, and had it by mail in time to listen before the show; I picked up a copy last night, along with one of the tour t-shirts (they also had tank tops, hoodies, etc.)

The openers, And One, were okay to dance to, but didn't grab me beyond that. They began their set by announcing "From now on, this is German territory", and the crowd seemed cheerful about that because it meant they were about to sing; I was left thinking "we won the peace, that time" [for large values of "we," obviously, but some of the names that came to mind were Truman, Marshall, de Gaulle, and Willy Brandt]. It also reminded me that I may have been the oldest person on the dance floor (no way to be sure, in either direction). The random people near me in the crowd were friendly, including a couple of conversations that basically were someone apologizing for bumping me while dancing, and me saying things like "it happens, I'll try not to bump you."

I got home late, by my current standards (about 1:30); maybe not by those of the people I overheard after the show discussing whether they were going clubbing. cattitude was happily asleep, of course. [He also likes VNV Nation, but wasn't up for standing that long in a crowd, so I only bought one ticket.]