IRC-Galleria

Wednesday, April 14th, was one of the best nights of my whole life. And I don't want that to be taken lightly for I'm not saying it just to have something to say –I really mean it.

Hamburg, Germany, sometime after noon. Me, Rami and Minna are dead set on not relaying on taxis, wanting to navigate our way to the Grosse Freiheit 36 club onto the edge of Reeperbahn by ourselves, using a map that none of us can really read. After some serious wandering we finally came over the Beatles Plaza, a little clearing so fucking cool I don't even have words for it. It had the silhouttes of all the Beatles' made from some sort of thin metal which was also used to form their instruments.

(It doesn't matter that The Beatles broke fourty years ago and that this year's December 8th marks the 30th anniversary of Lennon's death – those metallic ideas of men never let go of their instruments or walk away from each other.)

About twenty meters from the Plaza was where we finally found the club that within six hours would have the most amazing quartet in the music world playing inside its confines. Three o'clock in the afternoon, four hours 'till the doors open and I was already so spiked by just seeing the place where AFI would be playing that I didn't quite know what to do with myself.

There wasn't much people in there; 'bout five German girls, two Swedish and, of course, Susanna from Finland. The other one of the Swedish girls was really social and talkative, offering to write place numbers on the backs of our hands, so that if we needed to go to eat or something we would still get back to the same spot in the line (we we’re number 9's).

While AFI did their soundcheck they sometimes made it so that we could hear on the outside exactly what they were playing. We got to hear the whole of I Am Trying Very Hard to Be Here and a cover of Ramones' My Brain is Hanging Upside Down (Bonzo Goes to Bitburg), which was so amazing to hear that I recorded the whole thing (my digital camera captures voice pretty nicely, despite otherwise being shitty and old as fuck).

I chain smoked like crazy and kept on vibrating like a Duracell Bunny on where I sat on the asphalt, partly because of the cold but mostly 'cause I was just üper anxious. After four years and ridiculous amount of money spent on vinyl, after ceaseless hours of listening their music and spending at least the same amount of time talking about the said music, after getting two tattoos and finally coming across someone who created words that I could relate to, I was finally about to see the most amazing band in the world performing live.

Not watching some crappy live recording on YouTube, not putting the I Heard a Voice DVD on for the millionth time. No, this was the real shit, real as in "They're actual people, not just pixels on screen", as in "They're in the same room as me", as in "Davey's flying sweat dropplets just struck me blind".
Yeah. You could say I was a little excited.

Most of the poeple did't start showing up 'till 'bout an hour before the doors were opened, which seemed to me really odd; at the Placebo shows that I've been there's always been many groups of people camping in front of the doors and if you didn't show up at least four hours beforehand there really weren't any chance of getting anywhere near the front row.

It was already over seven o'clock when they finally opened the doors and what followed was a couple of too long frantically spent seconds when I got stuck in the security check 'cause of the water bottles I'd forgotten in my back bag. Then it was quickly to the cloakroom and I was nearly hyperventilating by the time I run to the floor. I got to the front row, mainly 'cause Minna is an amazing individual who, dispate her small size, managed to make herself seem somehow wider so no-one got near her.

The Dear & Departed played and it was... nothing special. Their sound was boring to my ears, though I really much liked their drummer. Good drumming gets me always going, so yes, I ended up pogoing dispate not really feeling the songs.

After they left people just started scurrying upon the stage, getting everything ready for the boys. There was this really, really good looking guy who I first saw only partly and I immediatly thought "Oh my god, that’s Smith!". Then he revealed himself from behind the huge speakers and I started seriously doupting my eyesight; he looked like Smith, but then again he didn't and he hadn't been on the UK shows so if this guy wasn't him, then they'd done some amazing job on finding a Smith-look-a-like to replace the real thing. Finally I came to the conclusion that this guy wasn’t Smith and just watched as he got the water bottles and towels in place and played with some buttons and Adam's drums. Couple of times our eyes met and he gave this cute-kind-of-shy smile to me, and when he noticed my half-sleeve tattoo he stared for it a long while before lifting his eyes to mine and just full-out smiling. Made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

When AFI finally took the stage a little past nine, I don't think that anyone at first realised the show was about to start; the Smith-look-a-like had been talking through a mic to this German guy handling the club's sound and the dude just didn't seem to get what he was asking of him, and the fill-out music just kept going on and off, louder and quieter and the Smith-l-a-l seemed to be getting kinda frustated, increasing the volume of his mic so everyone in the front heard him talking to the German guy.

I was watching so intensely the communication between these two that when the fill-out music suddenly stopped and the lights went out it took me a moment to realise that the show was about to start.

There was this rumpling sound and suddenly Jade was RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME, playing the first riffs of Medicate. The lights on the stage went on and Davey came running from the left side and, literally, the first thought that popped into my head was; "Oh, he really is short".

It was beyond amazing, beyond fantastic, beyond any kind of words. The fucking energy they all had on stage was just unbelievable; the running, the jumping, the constant movement. How the hell do these guys keep delivering this same thing night after night when on tour?

And Davey was just so... GUH. The dramatic hand movements, the dance like pirouettes, the jumping on amps, the overly done movements like he was some theatrical character. It truly seemed like I was seeing a play being performed in front of me, something that demanded getting as sweaty as possible, as quickly as possible.

Davey had some really nice sounding new vocal arrangements on some songs ia on Miss Murder.

Hearing on On the Arrow was so tender I couldn't help but hold my breathe almost throughout the whole song. And it was nice change to see Adam for once in the front of the stage when he came to play the shaker on Jade’s spot. He had just a scared look on his face I felt like stating "Fuck this", and proceeding to climb over the barricade to hug him.

Love Is a Many Splendored Thing was performed with so much energy and meaning it was hard to believe that it's been thirteen years since they last put out a full-out punk album. Also hearing Perfect Fit was beyond greatness, what with it being on my Top 10 –list of their older songs and all.

During Kill Caustic Davey came and kneeled on the right edge of the stage in front of me, and while singing the line "All the same, I remain the one to blame and I'm...", he looked me straight in the eyes. This eye-contact, despite lasting only few seconds, left me kinda breathless and smiling widely like an idiot for the remaining of the song.

Too Shy to Scream started perfectly with Davey standing on top of his glittery platform, shaking himself like in the midst of an epilectic seizure. When he sang "I'd die if you only met my eyes...", it was this time Rami who was standing on my right that fell victim to Davey's eye-sexing. He's reaction to this was priceless when he recounted this happening to me and Minna after the show:
"Fuck sexual orientation; after that kind of eye-molesting I would totally have sex with him." Oh, how I do love my brother.

The Days of the Phoenix made my eyes water. It was so tender, so perfect, so beautiful. If we forget everything else - the amount of money spent on this trip, the many hours we walked with heavy back bags when being lost in the streets of Hamburg, the morning coffee that cost 2€/cup - it was this song alone that made it all worthwile. This was the high-light for me, this piece that had so much emotion behind it it had me almost full-out crying.

And then it was all over. They did the encores and suddenly the last song ended and they all came to the front of the stage and then walked away so quickly that it took a while to get that this was it. Four months spent waiting this, 'bout an hour of watching them play and now it was all over.

I was happy and sweaty and ecstatic and totally drunk from the energy of it all. Still am, and probably will be for a long while still.

Two months and twenty-eight days. The excitement is finally starting to settle in.

Anyone else up for a little three day trip in Germany? We'll have a blast, I can guarantee. Need to get a bigger memory card for my camera so I can film the whole thing.

I once got lost when I tried to navigate my way back home after a night of heavy drinking. And this one time I did the dutiful job of a map reader while roaming through Finland. Unfortunately I had no idea what I was doing and ended up reading the phone book map upside down. Needless to say it didn't go well.

So, trying to get a move around in Hamburg? We're absolutely-completely-totally fucked.

But we'll make it a fun kind of fucked.