Bloc Party and the Kills
The Warfield, San Francisco, CA
September 21, 2005

Bloc Party on Wednesday was just as brilliant as their last show at Slim's. V and Jenz were down in the floor, just a few feet back from the stage in an effort to attract the attention of their Brit heroes. I was happy to head up to the balcony, and had company from V's friend Raffi. After sending the girls inside so they could stake out their spots on the floor, i got to wait in front of the Warfield for Raffi to arrive. As such, i got to enjoy the parade of minivans dropping off 15 year olds, with parents giving last minute warnings and orders to meet them back here at 11pm sharp. Straight out of Almost Famous. While waiting, i ran into Nathan and Summerlea and got to chit chat for a bit. When Raffi arrived, we headed inside and grabbed a drink, and lo, ran into Nathan and Summerlea again. We got to our seats during the interval before second openers the Kills, and amazingly, there on the other side of the aisle were Nathan and Summerlea again. The Kills were great, a two person grungy blues/punk outfit. Most of the set was the guy playing guitar, both singing, and a tape playing drums and other assorted backing noises, but it was fantastic nonetheless. The girl tried to climb one of the PA stacks but was shooed off by a worried stagehand.

Raffi and i occupied ourselves discussing fantasy sports until Bloc Party arrived. The set was much as before, but no less entertaining. A few unplanned events livened up the evening. At one point just before the end of their main set, an unruly fan made it onto the stage. For some reason, instead of the security guy ushering him offstage, he ran straight at him, all but forcing him to stage dive into the crowd. Thankfully away from V and Jenz, but unfortunately he kicked some girl right in the face. Kele immediately put down his guitar, causing the rest of the band to stop playing moments after, and pulled the girl onstage to send her off for treatment. Amazingly, the crowd booed. I was dumbstruck ... how can you fault a performer for stopping the show to help out a fan who's been injured? Something similar happened at their show at Slim's, causing the bass player's last words of the evening to be "that's just not cool". When the band emerged for an encore, Kele made a brief statement about enjoying the show but using common sense at the same time. During their first song of the encore, he wandered in front of the monitors to interact with fans in the crowd (unfortunately not close to V). Backing up, he tripped over the monitor and fell right on his butt. He laid there for a while as the band played on, then got up, wandered over to the other side of the stage, and did the exact same thing again. He then took a page out of the Kills' book and climbed the PA stack, this time ignoring the worried security person's pleas to get down. He looked like he was going to swing on a set of cables from the ceiling lighting, but then apparently took his own advice about common sense. Anyhow, a great show and a band to keep an eye on.

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