The Big Day Out

We went to a fantastic concert yesterday on Randall’s Island in New York City. It is quite a big thing for us since we both love music, but for the last six years have been out of touch with the music scene having lived in Okinawa, where few bands tour, or England, where we had a bit of a hard time and didn’t really get organized to see anybody. So this was the first of what will hopefully be many opportunities to see great bands live.

It was quite horrifying to get there since it involved my first driving experience in New York City, during which I nearly got sandwiched between a truck and an SUV while changing lanes on the George Washington Bridge, and then played Frogger with our car, driving horizontally across five lanes, narrowly avoiding death again, in an effort to get to the turnoff for the island that we spotted only at the last second – vis-à-vis this diagram (click on it to enlarge):

We had booked to see The Arcade Fire, one of the best bands around at the moment and from Montreal, where all of the good bands seem to be originating from lately. Little did we know, however, that the event was actually a music festival, so instead of seeing one band for to hours, we got to see five different bands play for six hours. By far the craziest and most enjoyable was Les Savy Fav, a punk / post-punk indie band from New York City. The lead singer, Tim Harrington (see a pic here), was hugely entertaining, running out into the crowd during songs, wardrobe changing on stage, throwing cheesecake at people, getting tangled up in the wiring, and generally being more interested in having a good time than actually singing, while the very talented band played on seemingly oblivious to his antics. It made for a great show. If they ever come to an area near you then they are well worth the money to see. Here's a clip:

We left close to midnight and stopped at a diner at around 1am in Nanuet for a burger. We were starving since we had only eaten once that day (katsu at Mitsuwa, a large Japanese supermarket in New Jersey), and I wasn’t really expecting much, but New York is amazing for food and even burgers at diners are excellent with crispy fresh buns, fresh salad, hot fries, and lots of delicious melty cheese.

All in all, a great day. New York is certainly a fantastic place to live.