Note: this is less a review of Alabama Shakes than it is a helpful explainer for people seeing shows at the new Freedom Mobile Arch! Heck, that's not even Alabama Shakes on the stage, but Billy Allen + the Pollies. All photos by me!
Erika and I saw Alabama Shakes last year in Seattle, but we didn't REALLY see them; the Climate Pledge Arena was enormous and the band were tiny flecks a seeming kilometer away, in an arena holding maybe 18,300 people, compared to last night's venue, Freedom Mobile Arch, which accommodates about 10,000 people, assuming, I would guess, that you include the grassy hill in back, where the cheap seats are as cheap as they are because, well, there are no seats at all.
(Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle: this is NOT Freedom Mobile Arch)
Don't get me wrong, the trip to Seattle was wonderful, overall (photos and notes here, and also, if you're curious about the conversation with Vic Bondi, go here)... but the itch to see Alabama Shakes was not well scratched last time out. So a few months ago, when my buyout had me feeling like I could afford it, I kind of insisted we buy tickets for the band's Vancouver concert (which took place yesterday night as I write this). I'm very very glad we did. We splurged on good seats, too -- not the best in the house, necessarily, and not the SRO pit in front, but only 17 rows back, section 202 (right in the middle of the aisle). It was a much, much better experience than Seattle, though it didn't lend to particularly good photographs! This is about what a row-17 distance looks like, from a slightly zoomed-in cell phone, if you're wondering. Beats the heck out of the Climate Pledge experience!
When it turned out that the t-shirt I bought for Erika in Seattle was now too big, I inherited it and insisted on buying her a new one. That also, I think, proved a good idea!
.jpg)
The show was wonderful. The projections on either side of the screen allowed us to see Brittany's guitar playing up close, which was a treat (I hadn't actually realized that many of the solos are hers!). The sound was a little bit echoey for Muscle-Shoals-influenced Billy Allen & the Pollies (from Howard's own stomping grounds in Alabma; Billy invited us to cheer her choice to hire locals to support her), but it was marvelous for Alabama Shakes (I was not impeded in getting to the bottom of the stairs to take one reasonably close-up photo of Billy but imagine the stairs would have been much more crowded for Alabama Shakes. I did not try!). This is more or less what you're going to be seeing if you are seated in the front rows of the 200s:
The show was remarkably without incident, considering the scale. Security was fast and efficient -- we had to put our stuff in little baskets and get wanded, and there were NO BAG CHECKS available, so if you brought something you weren't allowed to bring, you would have been sent back out to either throw it away or stash it somewhere. Whatever you bring has to fit in an 8X11 bag. But we had followed those rules, so it wasn't at all an issue. And once we were in, there were no further hassles with security at all. There were plentiful guards at work but they all seemed polite and friendly and helpful and I didn't see them intrude needlessly in anyone's evening.
Ditto the actual concert experience -- it was pretty darn smooth and seamless. You know those minor annoyances that happen at every concert you go to where the artist is obliged to spend time asking for more of instrument X in monitor Y, or asking for the lights to be adjusted, or tuning their instruments, or...? Maybe that's more a feature of the smaller shows I favour, but it was still kind of amazing that there was utterly none of that last night. Everything was perfectly set, perfectly executed, one of the most flawless deliveries of a concert experience I've encountered.
But there were some (very minor) nuisances no less, not with the show per se, which I'm going to enumerate as a way of helping folks plan for future concerts there, since there are many coming up (hell, there's even one I'm going to!). It was entirely a new space for me, so it was pretty interesting to explore and catalogue the pros and cons, the highs and lows and a few of the eccentricities.
The most significant of these is just the logistics of getting there: turns out Freedom Mobile Arch is new enough as a venue--having just opened in June--that it is still not on the signs that stand at the corner of Renfrew and Hastings, which is where you have to enter. And we could have used a bit more "prep" in the online information about getting to the show. For one thing, the venue is accessed, at least later in the day, via the PNE entrances off Renfrew, not the Playland ones down Hastings; arriving when the 4:PM soundcheck was underway (we could hear it going on). We made a foolish mistake of paying a substantial amount for parking near Playland, because we could see the arch nearby, and thought it would be convenient (in the lot just off Windermere, across Hastings)... but then we were denied entry, since they were closing soon and had cut off ticket sales at 4 (a ticket to the show did NOT get you access to Playland). Even though we just wanted to cut through (and/ or maybe grab a bite from one of the Playland vendors, who had better food options than inside the Arch grounds), we had to walk a few blocks down to Renfrew, then walk the same length back towards Playland (following very limited signage; I noticed exactly one directional signboard, but I'm familiar with the area, which I've been coming to since I was a child; we could see a first timer getting pretty confused), then stand outside the gates to the concert area for an hour, waiting to be admitted, wondering if we'd be able to get a decent meal inside.
At least there was a merch table to keep us a bit entertained, and a VIP booth that, while ultimately not useful to us in any way, did have Alabama Shakes playing over the speakers (Also, pleasantly, we were at least allowed to walk back OUT through Playland, once the show was over).
One nice thing was that PNE staff came out at one point to offer seated, ticketed upgrades to people who had bought grassy knoll "seats." This is probably no more reliable than getting an upgrade on a flight, so I wouldn't bank on that offer being made for every show, but I know at least one person (Gerald, in fact) who benefited from this, which is a good thing, because the grassy area (while it would be just fine for a cheap seat if the weather was nice) looked like you see below (actual photo: I jogged up to the top to snap it). I don't think I'd want to see a show with my ass in two inches of cold water! Erika says that the "know before you go" email specifically said no chairs, no blankets, etc., so even if you have a folding chair that fits in an 8X11 bag, you wouldn't have been allowed, it seems, to use it. So caveat emptor, grass sitters!
It's a fair distance away from the stage, too. Below is the view from the SRO area (the highest-price tier for tickets, so I wasn't able to access it, but could stand to the side of the stage to snap this, which I believe is showing you the "202 area" -- the best space to sit in. We were 17 rows back from here). You can see the structure above the grass in the back:
There are lots of food options but some things could use some ironing out. Like, there were no sweet treats of any sort: no cookies, chocolate bars, candy bars, ice cream, etc., which is tiny, but Erika felt like something sweet, and I circled every stand to no avail; it seems a weird oversight (people on diabetes meds sometimes will get low blood sugar, which they can address with a sugary snack, so it's more than just an issue of catering to audiences). There WERE choices of common street-fair food: poutine, pizza, hot dogs, etc. There was even a healthy option, a chicken Caesar salad with croutons which Erika seemed to enjoy. I opted for pizza, and didn't care for the texture of the cheese, which had a sort of "foamy" quality that I find often comes with a reheated pizza; I suspect all their pizzas are pre-cooked and refrigerated, then heated when you order it (because it only took about five minutes to get). Maybe I'm wrong. Suffice to say, I'm fussy about cheese, and did not like the texture (or the pools of grease that I dabbed off with a napkin). Erika had a few bites and liked it well enough, so maybe it's just me? She likes a reheat just fine with her pizza, though. (I either have it freshly made or cold).
Mostly, though, the food was plentiful, had more options than we expected, was not super-expensive (I think a bottle of pop was $4?), and there were vendors in a few spaces, so there was no issue of long lineups. We didn't explore the alcohol options, but there seemed to be plenty of choices there, too.
One interesting thing I noted: there was absolutely NO trace of cannabis in the air. Maybe it's down to the option of legal edibles, or general prohibitions against smoking, but the only thing I smelled anywhere on the grounds last night was one puff from was someone's fruity tobacco vape. (I here mean "fruity" in the more literal sense, note, as in, it smelled like fruit). Given that there are people who CAN consume cannabis products but CANNOT (or at least SHOULD not) consume alcohol -- people, like me, who have had tongue cancer, say -- and given that you can now buy cannabis beverages, gummies, and so forth basically in every city in Canada, it sure would be nice if the powers that be extended cannabis liberalization to concert venues, too, eh? I could someone successfully pursuing this as an issue of accessibility: why should alcohol drinkers be allowed access to intoxication at concerts, while those who cannot imbibe it be forbidden?
As for the washrooms, there are plenty of stalls. It's interesting: they use the standard, old fashioned men and women iconography to let people know where the toilets are, but once you actually GET to the toilet area, the iconography changes to wheelchairs and toilets, so I spent a few clueless minutes LOOKING for a men's room while being totally surrounded by gender-neutral stalls. So the bathroom area is kind of post-binary-gender/ post-toilet-segregation, but the long distance signage isn't; I'm not complaining, just noting an eccentricity (is there a name for archaic iconography that survives past its best-by? For instance, the little floppy disc you click on to save a document, when no one has used a floppy disc in fifteen or more years?).
Mostly the washroom area was just another cool aspect of the space as a whole: The sinks, in particular, were weirdly futuristic and trippy to behold... though oddly, the soap dispensers didn't work, so we were provided little pump bottles (visible if you look closely; that was liquid soap, not sanitzer. You can also see me in the mirror, snapping this photo):
What else? There wasn't anything in the way of heating and the whole area is open-air, so if you're prone to being cold, or if, as last night, it is breezy, wear a few layers? But that's a gentle tip, not a complaint -- I was, myself, very comfortable just in my t-shirt and shirt combo. Compared to the traumatizing shitshow that was the first night of the Neil Young concerts at Deer Lake last year, last night at Freedom Mobile Arch was a nearly perfect concert experience, really. Where your biggest quibble is, you couldn't buy your wife a cookie, you really have no quibble at all; I would not hesitate on shelling out money for another show there, should one strike my fancy (note, by the by, in fairness: the second night of Neil Young was much much better but the first night was such a fuckup, organizationally, that I will evermore think twice about going to Deer Lake for a show. I won't hesitate on Freedom Mobile Arch shows, though).
As for the concert itself, Brittany was, of course, charming and sincere and a powerhouse performer, as ever. She, Heath and Zac remain the core of the band, and it is unclear to me if the two keyboardists, drummers, and female backup singers we saw are just touring support or full on members now, but everything sounded great. I haven't lived with the new songs much ("Time", "I Feel Hope Coming", "American Dream" and "Garden," according what was played in Tacoma the other week; there is a setlist online for Vancouver, but it's missing at least two songs, maybe more). At one point, in acknowledging the challenges of our times, Brittany explained that she wasn't the religious type so wasn't going to offer us prayers, but instead wish us good tidings, whereupon she ran through a list of her wishes for everyone, starting with "I hope the price of housing goes down." Everyone cheered, whereupon she said something like, "Oh, you have that problem up here, too, huh?" At various points the whole section we were in -- maybe the whole venue? -- stood up to applaud or to dance, and we happily had a real good dancer in front of us -- an older Asian lady in a white T who totally got into it and thereby vicariously transmuted some of her pleasure to us. The biggest challenge of the evening (besides putting up with the various folks talking during concerts, but there seems to be no helping that in this city) proved to be the choice between watching the band on the screens (which feels like "more TV" but which had great detail, especially during guitar solos, which merited closeups) or watching them on the stage (you can't see it but it's first-gen, so to speak). But at various points ("Sound and Colour", say, which I am starting to think is my favourite song of theirs), I could solve that problem just by closing my eyes and listening.
All told a great night. Thanks to the bands and to everyone who designed the space, set up the show, and manned the evening. You done good!
No comments:
Post a Comment