I had already planned to not show up to the concert until about 6 o’clock. Face it; I only bought tickets to the damned thing to see HIM and Echo & the Bunnymen. Since they were on the main stage, I knew I had plenty of time to get there, which confirmed my plans when I got the event schedule off of Live 105’s website the day before. Echo was scheduled to hit the stage at 6:35, then HIM at 7:35. Sweet!
I finally get into Mountain View just before 6. Parking wasn’t too bad considering I knew that later arrivals would have to park way out in the boondocks. Not too bad, I just had to walk across a field. To get to the gates I had to walk past the whole second stage fenced area of the parking lot. The entire second stage area was completely deserted, having moved into the main area of the Shoreline.
First stop after I got through the gate was to hit the t-shirt stand. I wasn’t sure if I was going to get a HIM t-shirt and a BFD tour shirt, or just one of what would be available. I ended up just getting the HIM tour shirt. After that I headed off looking for the meet and greet queue. HIM was scheduled for the meet ‘n greet at 6:00. Figured I’d wait in line since I had some time to kill. That line was fucking long! I think I waited for all of 10 minutes before getting bored, and then took off.
So I wandered around a bit more. Even sat down at one point and text Wenchy asking her to remind me why I went to that damned thing by myself. Then I got up after smoking a butt and happened upon the Live 105 booth. Saw a quite a bit of people milling around and could see that they were interviewing some band. I joined the group of people, took a look to see which band and had absolutely no idea which band it was. Figured I’d get out my digital camera anyway and take some picture. Why the hell not? I had a great view and figured I might as well get some shoots that were not all crap. So out came my camera. At this point some guy walked up to me and asked if he could get a light off my cigarette, which I happily obliged. I asked which band was being interviewed and he told me it was Franz Ferdinand. “Oh, no wonder I didn’t know who the hell they were!” I said to him. Which he agreed with me on, then went on to talk about how fucked up one of the guys teeth were. Comments of really bad English teeth ensued.
While I had been waiting in the meet and greet line I had looked at the printed schedule booklet that LIVE 105 had printed up. Looking at that the line up was way off from what I had printed off their website. So I thought Echo wasn’t going to be taking the stage until later on in the evening. Boy was I wrong! As I was taking pictures of the Franz boys I hear Bring On The Dancing Horses. WTF?! Echo was on stage as per the websites schedule. Bastards! Off I went to go find my way to my seat. And such great seats they were! According to when I bought them, during the PRE SALE mind you, the best available seats given to me were section 201, row R, seats 21 and 22. Yeah, best available seats my ass! Fuckers! I hate how they save the front row seats and the front row sections for ticket brokers and crap. Bastards!
I finally make my way to my seats, well okay, seat. But at least I had the option to sit in which ever one I wanted to since I knew the owner of the seat next to mine. And let me tell you, they were both crap! Holy shit I was far away from the stage. And to top it all off, the section sign posts for the first row section was right our sections line of sight. Thankfully those were taken down not too long after I finally made it my seat.
Now it’s time to see just how far I am away from the stage in regards to trying to take some pictures. Uh yeah, crappy! I had to go into digital zoom mode. Now I know these pictures are going to turn out like crap. However, at least I’m getting any pictures at all.
Now what the fuck?! Are you fucking kidding me?! Two to tree rows ahead of me is an older couple (well, they were older than me by at least 5-10 years!) who are standing up while Echo are on. Now mind you, they are the ONLY ones standing in our section AT ALL! Not long after I myself was mouthing off that they needed to sit their ass down (okay, not loud enough for them to actually hear me) I hear a few people behind me start yelling down to them to “sit their fucking asses down”. After awhile the guy must have actually heard and sat down, then tried telling his wife, or whatever the fuck she was to him, to sit down too. Which I was surprised that she did. Only to stand back up again about 10 minutes later! After that I then saw a girl walk over to her and ask her if she could please stay seated as there were a lot of people behind her that she was blocking the view of the stage from. Again I was surprised to see that she obliged and even stayed seated for the rest of Echo’s set. They took off after Echo finished up, never to see them again after that.
Echo and the Bunnymen were awesome. I didn’t know what to expect from this band live as I never got a chance to see them in the ‘80s in their hey days. All the songs sounded great, especially The Killing Moon. I was glad I didn’t miss the rest of their set.
HIM finally took the stage about the time they were scheduled to. They only thing I was a bit put off by was from what Mige was wearing. Mige is a big boy, no hiding that, least of all in a black mesh shirt. Every time the camera man was on him you could see his big man boobies on the big jumbo screens. Ugh, just put them away! Gas on the other hand had on a Slayer t-shirt on. Gas loves to rock the Slayer t-shirts. Ville had on a Hedwig and the Angry Itch t-shirt on underneath his jacket. Although, Ville always looks fucking good! Burton and Linde looked pretty much the same as usual.
Okay, so anyway, HIM’s set was pretty short, only 8 songs. I’ve listed the set list of both Echo and HIM’s in the slide show below.
After they finished up their set, it was my queue to leave. As I was hiking back to my car I spotted a Scion xB in the VIP parking lot that had the license plate of EVILDAV. I thought it was kind of ironic as Mr Love himself has a silver Scion xB. Those who know me well will see where I see the irony. This silver Scion was pretty decked out from his though. This one I was has blue flames and an iron cross emblem on the back of the hatch. I included a shot of it in the slide show below.
As I passed the second stage area I stopped and took a picture of the desolate stage. I just thought it looked neat with the setting of the sun. Also included in the slide show I put together.
Then as I was walking across the field towards my car, I was looking towards my right and noticed the building that was on the other side of the trees. The way the sun setting glared off the glass windows of the building just caught my attention. So I started walking towards it. As I broke through the trees though, what I had seen from the field was gone, but what I did see I liked even more. So I ended up strolling around this building complex for probably a good hour taking all kinds of shots. Little did I know, until I happened upon the reception area of the building and the ‘quad’ area, that I had been strolling around the complex of Google.com. Hell, I didn’t even know Google was located in Mountain View. The pictures that I spent taking there ended up being the best pictures of the night. Then just before I was leaving, still taking pictures on the way out, I dropped my camera trying to light a cigarette. I think I broke something in it. I was still able to take quite a few more pictures after that, but as I turned it off and the lens was being pulled back into the body it made clicking noises. So now when I turn the camera on and off, the lens makes a clicking/popping sound as the lens goes out and back in. Great, smooth move on my part! I’m just glad that it wasn’t my new digital camera that I just bought. I just bought it a week ago, but it’s on back order. I’m hoping to get it before the wedding that I am going to on the 1st of July.
So that is my tale to tell of my lonesome BFD experience. All in all, it was not a bad night. Even with the dropping of the camera. So, for your enjoyment below I have put together a slide show of ‘the best of the worst’ shots from the concert itself and my tour around the Google complex. The concert pictures themselves I ended up converting to black & white and they still look like shit, but they look a whole lot better than they did in color. I think they look actually pretty cool in black & white. When I look a them they kind of give me an old newspaper feeling and even an old Ed Sullivan feeling when you see the old black & white shows from back in the day. So I guess in a way I ended up giving an artistic feeling to them. Well, so I see anyway. I don’t know about you all. The Google pictures I took in black & white as that was the look I was originally going for anyway, I just added a little bit of a blue filter to them.
Anyway, hope you enjoy.
