Guess what? TV is fake!
A few weeks back I got an email offering me free tickets to a taping of The Album Chart Show. I figured, what the heck, free tickets to a rock show! Even if the bands blew, it was free.
So I rang up my buddy Lydia, and she agreed to come, and tonight we headed down Camden ways to Koko where the taping was to occur. Queued up for a bit, and were herded inside to what was essentially a regular night at Koko, except with lots better lighting and loads of TV cameras set up everywhere. Lydia thanked me for the ticket by buying me an overpriced drink at the bar, and we made our way to the floor and boogied to the Kaiser Chiefs (do they play anything else here?) without any idea of what to expect.
After awhile, a portly, balding fella with massive headphones made his way on the stage and started incoherantly barking out orders to the 1000 or so of us young, hip folks littering the floor. I have no idea what he said, but the gist of it I figured out after awhile was after he counts to three, everyone has to start whooping it up like they just won the lottery. If we weren't good enough, he'd make us do it again.
The fun part was that we were yelling and cheering and waving our hands to nothing. An empty stage. The host would do his little spiel into the camera, pretend to introduce the band, and then we'd all start cheering for the cameras all while nothing was going on. Then we all milled around for about 30 minutes while they'd set up the band, who would finally come out, play 3 quick songs, take off, and we'd do it all over again.
It was great!
What was better was the lineup! We had no idea who was going to be playing before we got there. A few of the shows sounded cool (Belle & Sebastian & Aha. Franz Ferdinand & Placebo), but others had sounded frighteningly bad. I got to be in the audience for a very British show featuring The Streets, The Charlatans, Richard Ashcroft and Snow Patrol.
I was the most excited about Snow Patrol because I've always wanted to catch them. I didn't really know any of the songs, though, because they're off a new album I guess. The new stuff didn't move me the same way their first album did. I was disappointed. But I'm glad to know that their album is infinitely better than their live show, so now I won't waste the money!
Anyways, it was great fun seeing how wonderfully fake a TV concert is. Snow Patrol did one song twice, but I didn't catch the reason. We cheered everytime the man told us to (ironically of course). He even had the crowd pretending to cheer for Will Young (ha!), who wasn't even there that night. Apparently they needed better footage. We were even told to start jumping up and down and singing the words to U2's Vertigo while it played over the PA. Who knows why.
Now I'm all tired out from 4 hours of standing and about 30 minutes of rock.
So I rang up my buddy Lydia, and she agreed to come, and tonight we headed down Camden ways to Koko where the taping was to occur. Queued up for a bit, and were herded inside to what was essentially a regular night at Koko, except with lots better lighting and loads of TV cameras set up everywhere. Lydia thanked me for the ticket by buying me an overpriced drink at the bar, and we made our way to the floor and boogied to the Kaiser Chiefs (do they play anything else here?) without any idea of what to expect.
After awhile, a portly, balding fella with massive headphones made his way on the stage and started incoherantly barking out orders to the 1000 or so of us young, hip folks littering the floor. I have no idea what he said, but the gist of it I figured out after awhile was after he counts to three, everyone has to start whooping it up like they just won the lottery. If we weren't good enough, he'd make us do it again.
The fun part was that we were yelling and cheering and waving our hands to nothing. An empty stage. The host would do his little spiel into the camera, pretend to introduce the band, and then we'd all start cheering for the cameras all while nothing was going on. Then we all milled around for about 30 minutes while they'd set up the band, who would finally come out, play 3 quick songs, take off, and we'd do it all over again.
It was great!
What was better was the lineup! We had no idea who was going to be playing before we got there. A few of the shows sounded cool (Belle & Sebastian & Aha. Franz Ferdinand & Placebo), but others had sounded frighteningly bad. I got to be in the audience for a very British show featuring The Streets, The Charlatans, Richard Ashcroft and Snow Patrol.
I was the most excited about Snow Patrol because I've always wanted to catch them. I didn't really know any of the songs, though, because they're off a new album I guess. The new stuff didn't move me the same way their first album did. I was disappointed. But I'm glad to know that their album is infinitely better than their live show, so now I won't waste the money!
Anyways, it was great fun seeing how wonderfully fake a TV concert is. Snow Patrol did one song twice, but I didn't catch the reason. We cheered everytime the man told us to (ironically of course). He even had the crowd pretending to cheer for Will Young (ha!), who wasn't even there that night. Apparently they needed better footage. We were even told to start jumping up and down and singing the words to U2's Vertigo while it played over the PA. Who knows why.
Now I'm all tired out from 4 hours of standing and about 30 minutes of rock.
posted by Lauren Matson | 12:11 AM
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