Last week I made my first (and not last) trip to Glasgow to see the band Dispatch play at King Tut's Wah Wah Hut. A cheap, less than 1 hour train ride away, Glasgow surprised me. I really wish I had spent the day there before the concert! Everyone in Edinburgh (and the rest of Scotland in general) talks about Glasgow as if it is this dirty dungeon of a city. Personally, I thought, if Edinburgh is the Boston of Scotland, Glasgow was just the New York...and a more friendly, CLEAN New York at that! I am definitely taking a day trip there once classes are over.
Anyway, Conor told me about this concert when it was announced back in December. At the time I was pretty nervous about this semester in general, so I was a little weary about buying a SINGLE ticket for it - having no idea if I could get someone to come with me. The prospect of just "finding someone when I was here" was pretty intimidating at the time. Regardless, Conor INSISTED that I buy a ticket knowing that the first show of their first ever European tour was a MUST-GO, alone or not! I was further convinced when he informed me that the venue that they were playing at had the capacity for only 300 people! Seriously this place was practically smaller than my bedroom.
He sold me on that. The first time I saw Dispatch was at Madison Square Garden in the summer of 2007 - so, what's that? sold out 30,000 people? This past summer I saw them again at Boston Garden, and again, 30,000 people??? All compared to THREE HUNDRED. (Let's not forget their 110,000 person show at the Hatchshell in 2004, either) There was no way I couldn't go!
Coincidentally, one of my first few days of Arcadia orientation I found that this girl Emily had also bought a single ticket! At the time I had no idea that we would become best friends! And since we were both going - a few of our other friends bought tickets before they sold out. Golden.
The day had finally come and it was nothing short of AMAZING. I really wish I had the perfect words to describe it. We managed to get front row!!! FRONT ROW! I have never had front row for a show I didn't have a seat for (I think). And there was no struggle whatsoever...where we were standing didn't even have a barrier in front of it. Of course, there is always at least one person that annoys the crap out of you at a show - and miraculously the drunk idiot got herself kicked out before it started. Perfection. I thought I was dreaming.
The set was fantastic, as expected. But being so close to the band in general (2 feet!?) it was even more amazing to watch them interact. Each had this nervous excited expression of almost disbelief almost the whole night. Not only was their first European show ever, but it was also in Scotland. I mean, I love it here, but I would probably feel the same way too. The next night they were playing in London in a venue of I think 3000 people, and London is well, London...they said they were unsure if anyone would show up to Glasgow. Despite this, it turns out they absolutely LOVE Scotland. I think a lot of it is from Braveheart (which is dangerous to say actually in Scotland due to the idiocy of Mel Gibson's interpretation). I guess in their taxi from the airport their driver told them, in response to their attempted Scottish accents, to lay off the Mel Gibson. HAHAHA. Anyway, being so close, although I loved the music, I think I almost liked watching them interact with each other, and the crowd, a little better.
And Chad's wife had a baby two weeks before, and she was there! Awww
I'm going to post the set list for my own future reference. But they played all good stuff! Unfortunately we missed the last two songs of the encore because we had to absolutely sprint to the train in order to make it back to Edinburgh that night. I can't complain - it was a beyond amazing night and I still got to see Elias.
- Melon Bend
- Time Served
- Here We Go
- Bang Bang
- Lightning
- Valentine
- Two Coins
- Open Up
- Passerby
- Past the Falls
- Prince of Spades
- Bullet Holes
- Outloud
- The General
- Elias (encore)
- Flying Horses (encore)
- Bats in the Belfry (encore)
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