Antarctica Starts Here.

I finally copied the pictures I took at the Rasputina and Gary Numan concert in October off of my camera. I should have written about the show earlier but various and sundry things prevented me from doing so.

First off, Rasputina replaced Emilie Autumn as the opening act because she is going to undergo reconstructive surgery on her jaw (if indeed she hasn't already). Her tour has been rescheduled for January of 2011. I'm not that big a fan of Rasputina, to tell the truth. I've tried to listen to their work but it never seems to stick in my short term memory. Oddly enough, I enjoyed their live performance for reasons I haven't quite puzzled out. They opened with an eight song set that I'm probably going to track down a setlist for and listen to on Lyssa's iPod, as she has a collection of their work.

This particular Numan tour is interesting in that it was billed as a performance of a single classic album, in this case Pleasure Principle. He's not the first musical act to run such a tour, DEVO did the same thing in November of 2009 with two of their most popular albums. During the show he went through the entire album from start to finish, conspicuously silent during the first couple of tracks. Our curiosity must have been evident because after Films he took the microphone and said in a strained voice that he'd gotten sick a few days before and his throat was bothering him. He mentioned that he had to cancel the show the night before in Atlanta but he'd do the best he could. This suited us perfectly well because the hardcore fans were singing along, anyway. After he'd run through the Pleasure Principle he did a couple of later tracks from Telekon and Jagged, and capped off the night with a rendition of Are 'Friends' Electric? that brought the house down.

The light show aside, the thing that kept drawing my attention was the guy playing the electric piano at stage left (who doubled as lead guitar player for the newer songs). The guy had heart, I have to give it to him: there were a few times near the end of the concert that he nearly collapsed on stage because he was pushing himself so hard. I haven't seen anyone jam like that in a couple of years. He was soaked with sweat which went flying from the guitar strings a few times, and I wonder if maybe he wasn't performing while ill as well.

Anyway, enough of my yammering, here are the pictures.