Matt the Great

Adventures in Hotness: FRANZ FERDINAND

Ears are still ringing two hours after the concert. I saw FF last year at about the same time at Roseland, and it was really one of the sexiest things I've ever seen, but we were kind of far back, and Dave's skin infection kind of plays down just how hot the concert actually was. But tonight was Ferdinand's second, hopefully annual night of singing to Matt.

G & I were standing about 5 people from the stage, so they were all so big. We were kind of split in the middle between Nick McCarthy [at right, behind the American Eagle tool's hand] and Alex Kapranos [at left], and watching them together gave me many of the same feelings I got when watching Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna together in Y Tu Mama. And I really don't know how to describe it all, other than it was all so hot.

The pictures come from the really hot Australian girl whose ponytail slapped me in the face a lot when she was jumping. If she wasn't, like, as hot as she was, I would have been all passive aggressive about how she was annoying me, but the situation being what it was, her ponytail totally enhanced the concert. There was a lot of jumping. We were standing on the orchestra pit at the Theater at MSG, which is a hydraulic lift, so it kind of worked like a trampoline. You jumped even if you weren't planning on jumping. It was great, but now as I type it, it doesn't sound all that safe. The crowd was yelling out for "This Fire" at the end, and now thinking about that, it probably wasn't cool to have a lot of people yelling "Fire!" in a crowded, dark, public space. They gave us "This Fire" at the end of the encore which had them all standing on the drums doing things with their guitars and the drummer that made me really glad I'm an adult and know what to do with those kinds of feelings.

There was plenty of crowd interaction, yet they maintained their properness. Alex, at points in the music when his guitar playing wasn't that important, jammed it down into the crowd. They opened with "Jacqueline," each taking the stage and entering the song one-by-one. G and I thought of calling Jaclyn then, but the band was too hot to figure out how to work the cell phone at that time. G got her act together by "Michael," though, and called Spear. Costumes: Two center men in bright red cowboy button downs--a cut of shirt I've had since '03, mind you--and the two on the outside in all black. Drummer in the back in my old Jujamcyn ushering uniform.

They had 4 rotating panels of Franz-backdrop in the, well, back, and I knew they're called periaktoi because I have a degree in theater from a private school, and this blog entry marks the very first bit of good that degree has done me since graduation.

Yeah, it was hot. Look at the hot Aussie's pictures. That is why Franz Ferdiand is mattthegreat.blogspot.com's first Adventure in Hotness. And oh--the new cd is totally worth $13.99. Their voices in Track 1 are those type of voices you know come from hot people. I've developed a liking to Track Nos. 4, 5, 7, & 12.

posted by Matt the Great @ 10/17/2005