I went to the Arctic Monkeys gig at Sant Jordi Club  last night. It was a great gig – here is the opening song, Dance Little Liar – enjoy!

The last 10 days or so have been a furious blur of internet marketing after my trip to the UK.

However, I was able to break out of that last night when we travelled right across Barcelona to Badalona, where Franz Ferdinand were playing. What can I say? A great night, good tight playing, and an excellent and responsive crowd that was delighted to hear singer Alex Kapranos speak a few words of Catalan.

I really enjoyed the gig, the first time I’d seen them and the first concert since The Sisters of Mercy in Leeds back in April. Next on the list is Arctic Monkeys in February, who were excellent last time they played here.

One of the things that surprised me was the last song of the encore – Lucid Dreams – which on on the album starts off ok but then really loses it for me as it goes off on some kind of electro tangent. However, live it was brilliant – I went on for ever and was really trancy, and kept on and on and on as each member of the band left the stage so that finally the sequenced electronics and drummer were left, him going like crazy and using a megaphone as a mike! Brilliant!

Here are a couple of vids and a few photos – the first video shows some of the build up before they go on stage so skip forward by a minute if you want to get down to the real action. Enjoy!

I caught The Sisters of Mercy at Razzmatazz in Barcelona last month which was an amazing show. It was the best Sisters gig I’ve been to in 25 years of following them(!) – or at least the one I enjoyed the most.

I followed that up with a trip to Leeds where I saw them at the O2 Academy, from where I took the pics below. The gig wasn’t as good as Barcelona IMHO, but enjoyed it massively all the same PLUS went with my old mate from back in the days, Chris.

I briefly talked to both the guitarists at the after show party – great music BTW – but had to leave before Andrew Eldritch arrived.

This morning I’m recovering from seeing The Cure at Palau Sant Jordi, where they played for an amazing 3 hours 5 minutes and performed 38 songs! Although there were problems with the drums drowning out everything else for a period, many of the songs were The Cure at their best, something akin to being run over by an express train.

The concert kicked off with a couple of numbers from Disintegration, which do benefit from the band’s stripped down sound owing to dropping keyboards from the lineup, but the highlights for me were the earlier songs.

Setlist:
Plainsong
Prayers For Rain
alt.end
The Blood
The End of the World
Lovesong
To Wish Impossible Things
Catch
From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea
Kyoto Song
Please Project
The Walk
Push
Friday I’m In Love
Inbetween Days
Just Like Heaven
Primary
A Boy I Never Knew
Pictures of You
Lullaby
Never Enough
Wrong Number
One Hundred Years
Disintegration

Encore 1:
At Night
M
Play For Today
A Forest

Encore 2:
The Lovecats
Let’s Go to Bed
Freak Show
Close to Me
Why Can’t I Be You?

Encore 3:
Boys Don’t Cry
Jumping Someone Else’s Train
Grinding Halt
10:15 Saturday Night
Killing an Arab