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posted 12/16/09 02:06 PM | updated 12/16/09 02:06 PM
Featured Post! | Views: 179 | Comments : 3 | Music

Deck the Hall Ball: The Openers (Photo Gallery)

By josh
Recommend this story (2 votes)
Visqueen

The opening half of last night's Deck the Hall Ball was a Whitman's sampler of poppy rock acts that might have seemed more at home at a fundraiser for KEXP than a holiday party for The End. The doors opened at the after school special hour of 4:30 p.m. to admit the around-the-block lines of mostly underagers waiting to get a prime spot for Muse.

By the time Visqueen finished their sound check, introduced Rachel's niece to the stage, and changed into their rocking clothes, the concrete arena had filled to respectable capacity for the hometown opening set. Each band fit about six songs into their thrifty twenty minute set: Vampire Weekend mostly played the hits from their self-titled debut and threw in "Cousins" [youtube] as a taste of next month's Contra.

Phoenix whetted our appetite for their return to Seattle next month by opening and closing with crowd-pleasing "Lisztomania" and "1901," respectively, with Thomas Mars crowdsurfing across the floor to the sound booth to give their audio engineer (and a few other fans on the way) a birthday hug. Metric stuck mostly to a Fantasies highlight reel with Emily Haines strutting and dancing around the stage in a tiny sparkly dress between windswept piano attacks. The whole opening section swept by like clockwork, thrilling, delighting, and/or keeping the Muse-chanting kids happy during their wait for the Santa to arrive with the headliners. 

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Tags: 30 Seconds to Mars, Visqueen, Phoenix, Metric, Vampire Weekend, Deck the Hall Ball + add tags
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DTHB
Bonjour! Je mai pal, Scottie! Can I have a hug, Thomas Mars, por favor? Merci!

Also, it was brought to my attention that VW also played "White Sky" from Contra.

Loved the line "The opening half of last night's Deck the Hall Ball was a Whitman's sampler of poppy rock acts that might have seemed more at home at a fundraiser for KEXP than a holiday party for The End." Perfect description!
Comment by ScottieYahtzee
2 days ago
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RE: DTHB
très bon! continuer à pratiquer et vous serez prêt pour votre bien-aimé hugbro de retour le mois prochain.
Comment by josh
2 days ago
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RE: DTHB
in truth, the whole thing was a whitman's sampler, with the usual practice of having all of the best pieces of candy first and that leftover grossly syrupy chocolate covered cherry and the coconut nougat left for last.
Comment by josh
2 days ago
( +1 votes)
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