The Subways Kicked Ass!

Talk about rockin' out... the Subways had it in spades. It was quite possibly the best show I've seen. The tiny MacEwan Ballroom, on the third floor of the building housed the kick-ass energy poured out by the trio from England. Billy, the lead singer, was absolutely on fire... hyper as a motherfucker too. I even got a high-five with him on stage... flippin' cool. He was jumpin' off the drum set and jumped into the crowd once... I mean, wicked.



A set that included a few new tracks and all the favourites from the album, Young For Eternity. If you don't have that album and like to rock out, it's definitely one to get.



I had taken Chris, as he was really the only one readily-available to go. I was pretty sure that anyone else wouldn't really have enjoyed going. I had given Chris their CD to listen to and he did all day, as I was out playing a game of slow-pitch with the Hooligans. By the time I had gotten home, he was actually pretty pumped to see them as he really like the album.

We got to Mac Hall in great time last night to get ourselves a drink or two... or three in my case... before hand. What I wasn't aware of was that it was being staged upstairs in the ballroom, instead of the main hall that I saw Arcade Fire and the New Pornographers in. Upstairs, we found a line-up of youngin's hanging out before the doors opened, but it wasn't long before the doors were open. We went in and found the beer garden, as the Den was shut for a private function, which looked like the Canadian World Junior try-out camp functions were happening there as well.

Chris and I were the only one's in the beer garden for quite a while, as the youngin's were not of age to be drinkin', which made me, at least, feel quite old. We had a couple beers and I wasn't able to sit down at all. My lower back was just killing me after playing ball during the day. I mean, it was really, really stiff and sore. I'm sure all the running after Costas on Saturday (the story posted below) didn't help at all either. I had a few Guinness and Chris had a couple beers as well before heading upstairs into the ballroom. We each picked up a t-shirt and took our spots at the front row, just to our right-side of the stage. I was pretty sure Charlotte was gonna be on that side of the stage, as she's on that side in every picture I've seen of the band, so why change now?

The opening act was pretty solid. The Tracks, which I do believe was a local band from Calgary, were not too bad. They had the unfortunate trouble of one of the subs not being set-up properly for the first half of their set, which was solved... but couldn't really save their set. They had sort of blown their load in the first two songs, I thought. They used up their best material in the first two tracks and just couldn't really keep the crowd's enthusiasm, except for the three girls, who obviously knew the band... whom also seemed rather slutty.

During the opening act, I had a decent little idea. I wanted to see if I could send a message to Basil through the band, since he'd be seeing them in Portsmouth later on in August. I didn't really have much goin' on there, but I had one of my business cards to write on. Knowing that Chris had a pen in his pocket ('cuz you never know when you might need a pen), I asked him for it and wrote a message on the back of the card. I was chatting with the security guard who was standing at the same side of the stage for quite a while... he was a pretty good guy. Didn't catch his name, but we chatted for quite a while anyways. I ended up handing him the card and he'd see about getting it to the band for me.

Then the Subways came on to a huge applause from the, maybe, 300, probably less, crowd in the building. What a show they put on (as stated before, of course). I got something like 50+ pics of the show, which you can find on my MSN Space in a slideshow. And for all you fans out there, I even got a small video clip of the show, which is pretty awesome. It's actually a little spot from one of their new tracks...



In other news, yes, I played ball yesterday. A huge win for the Hooligans, 24-6... and that was even being short a few people and having to take an automatic out for being short a girl. Otherwise, it was a pretty good game. I played pretty well in left field, making two sliding catches on my knees and I went 4 for 5 at bat, batting from both sides of the plate. I scored every time I was on base, which should be obvious seeing what the score was.

The weather was sure funny yesterday, which may have caused some injury. It was super-warm for the best part of the game... then all of a sudden, this wind gusts up and was really cold and had the air of a storm coming. Well, my leg muscles were sorta seizing up and I guess, sort of my back as well... but I didn't think my back would be this bad. It really didn't affect me until after the game was over, but when I was getting in and out of the car for the concert and such, then really started to seize up on me.

With this sore back, it did make the concert kinda hard, but I was standing or leaning so, it wasn't too big of a deal. I was sure happy to get to bed last night, that's for sure. This morning was still tough... I slept alright, maybe because of the beer, but getting up was extremely difficult. I haven't been moving too quickly today... just been sorta doggin' it, despite getting shelled in the ol' e-mail inbox. Crap!

Tonight, the Royals have a doubleheader... I'm gonna try and stretch it all out tonight when I get home. Get on Jen's exercise ball and see what I can possibly do to my back to make it feel better. Then I might try and OD on Tylenol or something. The two aspirins I took this morning didn't really do anything for me... so... we'll see.

Wish me luck!