Dancing queen.
So it was a rather harried day. I didn't sleep at all that night because I had a philosophy test that I wasn't ready for yet. But I spent most of the time I was going to use for studying surfing around on the Internet. I ended up cramming in the half hour before class, and I was oh-so ready! But we ended up pushing the test until next session because everyone still had a bunch of questions. Oh well, that just means I will kick even more philosophy ass come Tuesday.
I crashed when I got home (no sleep, remember?). I had my sister wake me up at 5:30 but I fell back asleep and didn't get up until 7:00!! By the time I took a (much needed!) shower and got dressed, I needed my mom to drive me over to Popscene because taking the bus would have taken too long. Torture. I was in a rush: My jeans were still damp when I took them out of the dryer but I put them on anyway and used the hairdryer I had been using on my head to help hurry them along. We had to make a stop to pick up my dad from work. I didn't get there until 9:57 and doors were at 10:00. Popscene doesn't sell tickets in advance so there was already a line around the block. I resigned myself to the thought that I wouldn't get in. Flashbacks of the sold out Cafe du Nord show. :(
BUT! Cheli was already there and near the front of the line and basically saved me. She made line friends with two dudes and they all made fun of everyone's clothes and hair. Went in. Got a decent spot by the far right near the keyboards. But Casey and Jeff (two dudes) wanted us to stand with them so we ended up in a less prime spot, about two rows back in the center. And Casey and Jeff were tall! But they showed up early as hell, so they had the right to stand in front of us. Bumped into Marina.
We kind of regretted abandoning our spot the whole night. But, oh well! Hour and a half wait until the Sounds were on. BUT THEN IT WAS AWESOME. It was packed and crazy and hot and sweaty. The stage was barely a foot tall and there was no barricade and people were falling over each other all over the place. Some of those kids were aggressive! Almost all the front row was made up of boys, too. Psh. Nearly impossible to take pictures, but I tried. One girl actually grabbed my hair at one point to steady herself. WTD.
Maja had her hair partially braided into messy pigtails and was wearing this black dress with the buttons unbuttoned down almost to her stomach. It was calling out for a wardrobe malfunction (no bra) but she's a talented girl and, as far as I could tell, nothing popped out. There would probably have been a riot something had happened. It's almost pointless to try to describe the ferocity of Maja's performance and the general insane fun that is the Sounds, so I'll leave it at that.
Maja only kissed one person that night. This little blond girl in front of me. Every boy and girl in the place was jealous. (I was.) She got the setlist at the end, too. I took a picture of it. Hopefully that will turn out. New songs made up over half of what they played. I really liked them! It's all kind of blurry and fading now but there was one song that had a guitar hook that sounded like it was lifted off a TV theme but I couldn't remember what show. This is going to drive me crazy. Maybe it's just in my head. There was another song that had "na na na na na" background vocals that made me think of the Kaiser Chiefs. Some other stuff. It was sufficiently different from the old stuff. Sometimes a bit poppier. Other times a bit slower. Still good.
For now, here are the old songs I remember them playing: Hit Me!, Seven Days a Week, Dance with Me (I called Kalinda for this one since she was sad because she wasn't old enough to get in), Living in America, and Rock 'N Roll was part of the encore. No "Like a Lady" though. Aww. The bass broke down or something toward the end. I barely noticed. I think everyone was way too busy freaking out to notice something as insignificant as the bass dying, ha.
Right after their set, the DJ started playing "I Predict a Riot." LOOOVE. Listening to the Sounds does make me want to listen to my other dancey hipster music. Kaiser Chiefs. The Killers. Mostly the Kaiser Chiefs. <333 So I got all excited.
Then Cheli and I went to the bathroom refresh ourselves. But there were neither paper towels nor toilet paper. No nothing. None of us had tissues so we just had to stay sweaty and gross. We did comb our hair though. The humidity did something crazy to the way my bangs curled and it stayed that way all night, much to my amusement. My eyeliner was a little smudged but (surprise!) it managed not to completely melt off my face. Quite an achievement. Go Clinique black diamond! I am sorry that my bag somehow got open and you ended up on the floor. It is a miracle that you weren't snapped in half. But the cap fell off and the tip broke off. I'm just glad I found it.
I checked out the merch and got a bunnyhug. It cost me $30 and it's not as high quality as my Yellowcard one, but I'm just glad to have something from the Sounds. I also wanted this cute red shirt, but I didn't have enough money. I would have had only a dollar, but the merchgirl noticed that I accidentally gave her $35. Thank goodness. Then we went to the side bar to get water. Extremely overpriced water. But the bartender thought I was cute and let me have mine for free. We chatted for bit but I suck at that kind of thing. Cheli and I sat down, and I tried unsuccessfully to find the ball for the foosball table. Drat.
The drummer and the bassist came out to the bar. I talked to Fredrik (drummer) after Johan (bassist) wandered away. I would have talked to him, too, but Cheli told me that he was mean. We just chatted about band stuff. I mostly asked questions. He said that they hadn't played a show in over a year and had barely rehearsed and that they'd have a better set up next time. "Sorry about the technical difficulties, the bass and everything." I had actually almost forgotten that something had happened to the bass. He did enjoy how very "punk rock" the show was. Got a picture with him. Cheli, as well.
Then I stumbled upon the guitarist Felix. He introduced me to his brother who was like, "I'm from Sweden, too!" which made me laugh. He said he worked on their new record and when I asked doing what, he just said, "I'm his brother." There may have been a language barrier there.
I got a pic with Felix but in the middle of taking it, he said something like, "Let's hold each other closer!" So we took another one with our arms wrapped around each other and all pressed together. "We're best friends now!" I said. "Definitely best friends!" he agreed. And I think I was saying something else when one of the DJs from earlier popped up, and I thought she was going to talk to Felix, but she just asked for us to pose for a picture together. Maybe we look cute together or something? So there's a chance that will end up on the Popscene website sometime. I hope my crazy bangs and smudged eyeliner aren't in full effect. HA!
Felix was bopping along to the music and I was actually considering dancing with him, but he wandered off before I had a chance. I made a joke to Cheli that Felix and I should dance with her and her yuppie. There are usually a few working stiffs at Popscene, and Cheli and I had seen a suit and were on a constant watch out to see if he would ever bust a move or something. I began daring her to ask him to dance, but it never happened. We don't know if he ever danced at all.
It was like 1am and I was antsy about finally meeting Maja so I decided that I would ask whomever I saw from the Sounds next. I never managed to get around to it though. I noticed that Fredrik was standing behind me, so I kind of kicked him from the back and asked a favor: sign my CD. Haha. It turned out I had gotten Felix and Johan to sign it way back during Warped Tour. The case was majorly busted up from how intense the crowd was.
"It's not going to match that one, you know." There is a pre-printed signature on the mini-poster side of the CD booklet. He asked me what I thought of the new stuff, which one I liked best.
I gave him vague answers because I couldn't remember too many specifics. "I don't even know the song names!" I asked him if he knew what the new album art was gonna be like.
"That's one of the things we have to work out. The images. We haven't even picked a color."
I asked if he even knew what the first single was going to be yet.
"What song did you think sounded like it would be the single?"
Pause. Thinking. Giving up. "You're putting me on the spot here! I've only heard these songs for the first time!"
"We picked the song that sounded the most different from our other songs to be our single. We thought it'd be cool, like a surprise."
I said something about how the new songs were different enough from the old songs to be interesting (or whatever).
He never did tell me what their single was. He was playing with me! Psh. He did say that they just did a song on "Last Call" and that it was not the single. He said it was going to be on next week. Eeee!
Probably talked about some more fangirl stuff. Then he asked when Popscene closed. "Last call is usually like 2am." "What's the time right now?" I took out my cellphone. It read 1:11am. "Ooh! It's late. I need to hang out with some people before we go!" So we said goodbye and he left. I didn't get a chance to talk to him again but super nice guy. I'm pretty sure though that at more than one point we didn't completely understand what the other was talking about and just pretended and kept going, haha.
Tall skinny keyboard player Jesper wandered over and Cheli gave a start because he was the only one she needed... to sign her bag from the last time she saw the Sounds. Ha. He didn't notice at first. I think someone with him pointed her out. He came over and proclaimed, "It's my birthday today!!"
"Happy birthday!" said Cheli.
"How old are you?" I asked. No reply?
I asked him to sign my CD, too.
He acted very impatient as I was taking it out. "C'mon, c'mon!"
"What?"
"Guess!"
"Wait, what??"
"Guess how old I am!"
Haha. Cheli said 23, and I looked at him and thought he might be one of those many people who look younger than they really are and said 25. He was 24, of course.
Then we took some pictures that he made us pose nerdily for. He thanked us from coming to see them play and then flitted off with people buying him drinks for his birthday. He was so young and boppy and tall/skinny that he reminded me of Nick from the Kaiser Chiefs, but toned down. Toned way down. Nick is like fucking exuberant, delighted with everything. But Jesper is adorable. And a baby! 24!
I realized I hadn't asked either Fredrik or Jesper about where Maja was. But, as luck would have it, she walked in right then. She almost floated on by, but I stopped her and told her how awesome she & the Sounds are. Some girls swooped in and she thanked us all and walked away. I was kind of just happy that I finally (barely) talked to her and touched her shoulder. THAT'S RIGHT: I TOUCHED MAJA, motherfucker.
Then Cheli saw that she had stopped over by the merch table, so we shyly went over there and got a quick picture. She was not quite as ON as she usually is, just wandering around holding the hand of this much taller girl. I still love her! EEEE!
Anyway, Cheli and I hung around for a bit more before I decided I wanted to check out the dance floor. Seriously! We put our stuff in coat check and got our groove on. It was as geeky as you are probably imagining. I cannot dance. But so what? "The night is still young," is what I told Felix. I would attempt dancing at Popscene. Dancing is not longer limited to just Piebald shows and the privacy of my bedroom. Be afraid, be very afraid!
After a while, Cheli pointed out Felix, Jesper, Johan and a girl or two dancing in a group. Felix and Jesper were being pretty silly. We were dancing kind of close-by but not for anything more than to sneak an occasional look. There were plenty of other amusing dancers besides Felix and Jesper. Some guys were totally out there! But the Sounds really caught our attention when Maja came over and she and Felix got it going. I wanted to take a picture of them dancing together... It was all over the place. But I thought it'd be too creepy. Sorry, kids. [EDIT: it looked a lot like this or this. not from Popscene. but close enough.]
After they had finished, I thought we'd maybe move away. Cheli said there actually was a girl that tried to edge into their little group and dance with them. Yeeeah, we're not so into that. But toward the end of the night, it somehow turned out that Felix was behind me a lot. At one point, he was just off at my side dancing a little by himself. So I thought, why the hell not? And started dancing a little with him. Shockingly, he did not run away. Then he said something along the lines of, "Put your body in it, girl!" which definitely cracked me up. But when I recovered, I put some more hip into it and got my arms up and got in a lot closer. I think we both ended up being really cheesy but it was pretty fun. I just hope he was drunk enough to not notice what a horrible dancer I am!
So I got to dance with a hot Swede for a song. That's something I can cross off my list now, eh? It's funny because the first time I saw the Sounds, I thought Felix was so cute. Later I thought that Jesper was the cutest of the bunch. But lately I considered Fredrik to be the best looking overall. Ha!
Cheli and I boogied our toes off until the lights came up. Then we went to get our things out of coat check. Jesper and Felix and Johan filed past, headed upstairs. I waved bye to Felix. Cheli and I had thought that he was going to ask us to hang out; he has asked me a few times what we were doing later. But I am only mildly disappointed. It would have been just enough to have gotten into the show and touched Maja. Haha! It was a very fun night.
Not quite as great for Marina, because she lost her bag and jacket. The bag had her keys, CDs, and digicam in it, but luckily not her wallet. The Popscene bouncers let her look around for it, but it hasn't turned up. Buuut... apparently Maja remembered her. That's pretty cool. Cheli gave both her and me rides home because she is seriously the sweetest girl around. I amazed myself by not getting lost. I'm so glad Kalinda and I met her and Shawna. They are super fun OK Go fans. It was definitely fate!
Brendan Benson tonight! aka Crazy Stacy!
I crashed when I got home (no sleep, remember?). I had my sister wake me up at 5:30 but I fell back asleep and didn't get up until 7:00!! By the time I took a (much needed!) shower and got dressed, I needed my mom to drive me over to Popscene because taking the bus would have taken too long. Torture. I was in a rush: My jeans were still damp when I took them out of the dryer but I put them on anyway and used the hairdryer I had been using on my head to help hurry them along. We had to make a stop to pick up my dad from work. I didn't get there until 9:57 and doors were at 10:00. Popscene doesn't sell tickets in advance so there was already a line around the block. I resigned myself to the thought that I wouldn't get in. Flashbacks of the sold out Cafe du Nord show. :(
BUT! Cheli was already there and near the front of the line and basically saved me. She made line friends with two dudes and they all made fun of everyone's clothes and hair. Went in. Got a decent spot by the far right near the keyboards. But Casey and Jeff (two dudes) wanted us to stand with them so we ended up in a less prime spot, about two rows back in the center. And Casey and Jeff were tall! But they showed up early as hell, so they had the right to stand in front of us. Bumped into Marina.
We kind of regretted abandoning our spot the whole night. But, oh well! Hour and a half wait until the Sounds were on. BUT THEN IT WAS AWESOME. It was packed and crazy and hot and sweaty. The stage was barely a foot tall and there was no barricade and people were falling over each other all over the place. Some of those kids were aggressive! Almost all the front row was made up of boys, too. Psh. Nearly impossible to take pictures, but I tried. One girl actually grabbed my hair at one point to steady herself. WTD.
Maja had her hair partially braided into messy pigtails and was wearing this black dress with the buttons unbuttoned down almost to her stomach. It was calling out for a wardrobe malfunction (no bra) but she's a talented girl and, as far as I could tell, nothing popped out. There would probably have been a riot something had happened. It's almost pointless to try to describe the ferocity of Maja's performance and the general insane fun that is the Sounds, so I'll leave it at that.
Maja only kissed one person that night. This little blond girl in front of me. Every boy and girl in the place was jealous. (I was.) She got the setlist at the end, too. I took a picture of it. Hopefully that will turn out. New songs made up over half of what they played. I really liked them! It's all kind of blurry and fading now but there was one song that had a guitar hook that sounded like it was lifted off a TV theme but I couldn't remember what show. This is going to drive me crazy. Maybe it's just in my head. There was another song that had "na na na na na" background vocals that made me think of the Kaiser Chiefs. Some other stuff. It was sufficiently different from the old stuff. Sometimes a bit poppier. Other times a bit slower. Still good.
For now, here are the old songs I remember them playing: Hit Me!, Seven Days a Week, Dance with Me (I called Kalinda for this one since she was sad because she wasn't old enough to get in), Living in America, and Rock 'N Roll was part of the encore. No "Like a Lady" though. Aww. The bass broke down or something toward the end. I barely noticed. I think everyone was way too busy freaking out to notice something as insignificant as the bass dying, ha.
Right after their set, the DJ started playing "I Predict a Riot." LOOOVE. Listening to the Sounds does make me want to listen to my other dancey hipster music. Kaiser Chiefs. The Killers. Mostly the Kaiser Chiefs. <333 So I got all excited.
Then Cheli and I went to the bathroom refresh ourselves. But there were neither paper towels nor toilet paper. No nothing. None of us had tissues so we just had to stay sweaty and gross. We did comb our hair though. The humidity did something crazy to the way my bangs curled and it stayed that way all night, much to my amusement. My eyeliner was a little smudged but (surprise!) it managed not to completely melt off my face. Quite an achievement. Go Clinique black diamond! I am sorry that my bag somehow got open and you ended up on the floor. It is a miracle that you weren't snapped in half. But the cap fell off and the tip broke off. I'm just glad I found it.
I checked out the merch and got a bunnyhug. It cost me $30 and it's not as high quality as my Yellowcard one, but I'm just glad to have something from the Sounds. I also wanted this cute red shirt, but I didn't have enough money. I would have had only a dollar, but the merchgirl noticed that I accidentally gave her $35. Thank goodness. Then we went to the side bar to get water. Extremely overpriced water. But the bartender thought I was cute and let me have mine for free. We chatted for bit but I suck at that kind of thing. Cheli and I sat down, and I tried unsuccessfully to find the ball for the foosball table. Drat.
The drummer and the bassist came out to the bar. I talked to Fredrik (drummer) after Johan (bassist) wandered away. I would have talked to him, too, but Cheli told me that he was mean. We just chatted about band stuff. I mostly asked questions. He said that they hadn't played a show in over a year and had barely rehearsed and that they'd have a better set up next time. "Sorry about the technical difficulties, the bass and everything." I had actually almost forgotten that something had happened to the bass. He did enjoy how very "punk rock" the show was. Got a picture with him. Cheli, as well.
Then I stumbled upon the guitarist Felix. He introduced me to his brother who was like, "I'm from Sweden, too!" which made me laugh. He said he worked on their new record and when I asked doing what, he just said, "I'm his brother." There may have been a language barrier there.
I got a pic with Felix but in the middle of taking it, he said something like, "Let's hold each other closer!" So we took another one with our arms wrapped around each other and all pressed together. "We're best friends now!" I said. "Definitely best friends!" he agreed. And I think I was saying something else when one of the DJs from earlier popped up, and I thought she was going to talk to Felix, but she just asked for us to pose for a picture together. Maybe we look cute together or something? So there's a chance that will end up on the Popscene website sometime. I hope my crazy bangs and smudged eyeliner aren't in full effect. HA!
Felix was bopping along to the music and I was actually considering dancing with him, but he wandered off before I had a chance. I made a joke to Cheli that Felix and I should dance with her and her yuppie. There are usually a few working stiffs at Popscene, and Cheli and I had seen a suit and were on a constant watch out to see if he would ever bust a move or something. I began daring her to ask him to dance, but it never happened. We don't know if he ever danced at all.
It was like 1am and I was antsy about finally meeting Maja so I decided that I would ask whomever I saw from the Sounds next. I never managed to get around to it though. I noticed that Fredrik was standing behind me, so I kind of kicked him from the back and asked a favor: sign my CD. Haha. It turned out I had gotten Felix and Johan to sign it way back during Warped Tour. The case was majorly busted up from how intense the crowd was.
"It's not going to match that one, you know." There is a pre-printed signature on the mini-poster side of the CD booklet. He asked me what I thought of the new stuff, which one I liked best.
I gave him vague answers because I couldn't remember too many specifics. "I don't even know the song names!" I asked him if he knew what the new album art was gonna be like.
"That's one of the things we have to work out. The images. We haven't even picked a color."
I asked if he even knew what the first single was going to be yet.
"What song did you think sounded like it would be the single?"
Pause. Thinking. Giving up. "You're putting me on the spot here! I've only heard these songs for the first time!"
"We picked the song that sounded the most different from our other songs to be our single. We thought it'd be cool, like a surprise."
I said something about how the new songs were different enough from the old songs to be interesting (or whatever).
He never did tell me what their single was. He was playing with me! Psh. He did say that they just did a song on "Last Call" and that it was not the single. He said it was going to be on next week. Eeee!
Probably talked about some more fangirl stuff. Then he asked when Popscene closed. "Last call is usually like 2am." "What's the time right now?" I took out my cellphone. It read 1:11am. "Ooh! It's late. I need to hang out with some people before we go!" So we said goodbye and he left. I didn't get a chance to talk to him again but super nice guy. I'm pretty sure though that at more than one point we didn't completely understand what the other was talking about and just pretended and kept going, haha.
Tall skinny keyboard player Jesper wandered over and Cheli gave a start because he was the only one she needed... to sign her bag from the last time she saw the Sounds. Ha. He didn't notice at first. I think someone with him pointed her out. He came over and proclaimed, "It's my birthday today!!"
"Happy birthday!" said Cheli.
"How old are you?" I asked. No reply?
I asked him to sign my CD, too.
He acted very impatient as I was taking it out. "C'mon, c'mon!"
"What?"
"Guess!"
"Wait, what??"
"Guess how old I am!"
Haha. Cheli said 23, and I looked at him and thought he might be one of those many people who look younger than they really are and said 25. He was 24, of course.
Then we took some pictures that he made us pose nerdily for. He thanked us from coming to see them play and then flitted off with people buying him drinks for his birthday. He was so young and boppy and tall/skinny that he reminded me of Nick from the Kaiser Chiefs, but toned down. Toned way down. Nick is like fucking exuberant, delighted with everything. But Jesper is adorable. And a baby! 24!
I realized I hadn't asked either Fredrik or Jesper about where Maja was. But, as luck would have it, she walked in right then. She almost floated on by, but I stopped her and told her how awesome she & the Sounds are. Some girls swooped in and she thanked us all and walked away. I was kind of just happy that I finally (barely) talked to her and touched her shoulder. THAT'S RIGHT: I TOUCHED MAJA, motherfucker.
Then Cheli saw that she had stopped over by the merch table, so we shyly went over there and got a quick picture. She was not quite as ON as she usually is, just wandering around holding the hand of this much taller girl. I still love her! EEEE!
Anyway, Cheli and I hung around for a bit more before I decided I wanted to check out the dance floor. Seriously! We put our stuff in coat check and got our groove on. It was as geeky as you are probably imagining. I cannot dance. But so what? "The night is still young," is what I told Felix. I would attempt dancing at Popscene. Dancing is not longer limited to just Piebald shows and the privacy of my bedroom. Be afraid, be very afraid!
After a while, Cheli pointed out Felix, Jesper, Johan and a girl or two dancing in a group. Felix and Jesper were being pretty silly. We were dancing kind of close-by but not for anything more than to sneak an occasional look. There were plenty of other amusing dancers besides Felix and Jesper. Some guys were totally out there! But the Sounds really caught our attention when Maja came over and she and Felix got it going. I wanted to take a picture of them dancing together... It was all over the place. But I thought it'd be too creepy. Sorry, kids. [EDIT: it looked a lot like this or this. not from Popscene. but close enough.]
After they had finished, I thought we'd maybe move away. Cheli said there actually was a girl that tried to edge into their little group and dance with them. Yeeeah, we're not so into that. But toward the end of the night, it somehow turned out that Felix was behind me a lot. At one point, he was just off at my side dancing a little by himself. So I thought, why the hell not? And started dancing a little with him. Shockingly, he did not run away. Then he said something along the lines of, "Put your body in it, girl!" which definitely cracked me up. But when I recovered, I put some more hip into it and got my arms up and got in a lot closer. I think we both ended up being really cheesy but it was pretty fun. I just hope he was drunk enough to not notice what a horrible dancer I am!
So I got to dance with a hot Swede for a song. That's something I can cross off my list now, eh? It's funny because the first time I saw the Sounds, I thought Felix was so cute. Later I thought that Jesper was the cutest of the bunch. But lately I considered Fredrik to be the best looking overall. Ha!
Cheli and I boogied our toes off until the lights came up. Then we went to get our things out of coat check. Jesper and Felix and Johan filed past, headed upstairs. I waved bye to Felix. Cheli and I had thought that he was going to ask us to hang out; he has asked me a few times what we were doing later. But I am only mildly disappointed. It would have been just enough to have gotten into the show and touched Maja. Haha! It was a very fun night.
Not quite as great for Marina, because she lost her bag and jacket. The bag had her keys, CDs, and digicam in it, but luckily not her wallet. The Popscene bouncers let her look around for it, but it hasn't turned up. Buuut... apparently Maja remembered her. That's pretty cool. Cheli gave both her and me rides home because she is seriously the sweetest girl around. I amazed myself by not getting lost. I'm so glad Kalinda and I met her and Shawna. They are super fun OK Go fans. It was definitely fate!
Brendan Benson tonight! aka Crazy Stacy!