Thursday night I attended the Death Cab/Franz concert at the Memorial Auditorium in Sacramento, it was their 2nd stop of their current tour. Amazing show. I wanted to see Franz Ferdinand play a couple years ago in Berkeley, but that was about a week before I got my driver's license, so them being in Sac only about an hour away was a chance in a lifetime, not to mention being with DCFC.
The Cribs opened up the show, and they were pretty decent, I'd never heard any of their stuff, fast and upbeat, crowd didn't care much though, since nobody had heard of them. I went to the merch table with my girlfriend after a few of their songs, and got back as the crew was setting up for Death Cab. I ended up getting a Death Cab shirt, none of the Franz Ferdinand shirts were all that good looking, and were kind of plain.
One thing that surprised me a lot about Death Cab for Cutie, was that they had a lot more power live than you hear on their albums. I was really expecting a lot quieter, more subdued tone, but they were great, they sounded just as good live as they do on their albums. I'd say the only detractor was that their music clearly isn't meant for concerts, at least when compared to Franz Ferdinand. Ben Gibbard played "I Will Follow You Into the Dark" solo, and was probably their best performance, crowd loved that one.
After that Franz Ferdinand came out, and blew the roof off. It was a good thing they played last. Their music really got the crowd going, and are great performers. At one point, I forget which song, they had three guys playing one set of drums, got a real good pop from the crowd. They're really great showmen, except for Bob Hardy (bass), who is all business up on stage. But Kapranos and McCarthy especially played the crowd a lot.
All in all, it was a great show in a small venue, (probably 2 or 3 thousand), I ended up about 10 or 15 yards from the stage. Just wondering if anyone else is planning on going to a show on this tour, or if anyone else attended any of the 3 shows so far.