NLG goes to Phoenix

This past weekend marked the commencement of Vancouver’s “Cultural Olympiad”, a two month long cluster-fest of insane entertainment (may or may not include winter Olympics) that has NLG drooling on our v-necks.

Stop one on NLGs celebration of the Cultural Olympiad: a show by a little group of Frenchmen called Phoenix.

After a hasty repast courtesy of Falafel Town, home of Vancouver’s best falafel, we arrived at the Orpheum Theatre at 8:50 PM, only to find we had missed opening act, You Say Party! We Say Exclamation Mark! Feeling slightly saddened by this, and by that fact that we were rudely accused of not being drunk enough, we decided to improve our situation by relocating ourselves from our seats in the upper balcony to a standing position in the front row. Thanks to insufficient security, this proved to be no problem at all.

Then came Phoenix, a French revolution of pure unbridled vibrancy, with musical consummation smoother and more satisfying than the finest chèvre. Opening with the oh-so-sentimental-not-sentimental-no “Lisztomania”, they had us immediately jumpin’ and jivin’ and firing NLGs in all kinds of directions from all sorts of angles. Amid a sea of American Apparel, Serge and Gene were quickly whisked into a separate reality of horizontal stripes and overall musical elation.

At the midway point of the show, during “Love like a sunset”, front-homme Thomas Mars took a prolonged nap on stage, only to rise from the ashes to conduct a Napoleonic invasion of my frontal lobe that lasted until the end of their set.

For their encore, Phoenix attempted to quell the utter lunacy of the crowd by playing a couple acoustic jams, this only resulted, however, in an excess of pent up jubilation that would be released on the unsuspecting musicians as soon as they plugged back in. All it took was one daring individual to hop on stage and before security could grasp the situation, a small city's worth of Phoenix’s most dedicated fans were on stage (Serge and Gene inclusive). Although definitely fearing for their lives, Mars and co. managed to pound out their final two songs whilst being mauled by an overzealous mob of Francophiles, and concluded with a death defying execution of “1901” which threatened to break the stage… if not from sheer weight, then from the water damage caused by the sweat of what felt like 1901 fanatic stage dwellers. The entire experience left Serge and Gene in a state of euphoria, and no doubt gave the Frenchmen a reason to remember Vancouver.

In typical NLG fashion, no night stops when the concert ends. After Gene found himself on the business end of a gutwrench suplex from an estranged redheaded compatriot, it was off to the Cambie for a night cap, while we pondered the amount of phenomenal mayhem in which we had been so fortunate to participate.

This also marks the 3rd time NLG has written about Phoenix... for those keeping score at home.
Phoenix - Lisztomania
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