Hear ye, hear ye, come one, come all to Summercase. A two day event with !!!, Air, Bloc Party, DJ Shadow, The Flaming Lips, James, LCD Soundsystem, Editors, Phoenix, Arcade Fire, The Maccabees, PJ Harvey, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and on and on and on.

Summercase is, above all, a sonic banquet of the highest order, a Homeric gourmet feast for all tastes where you can discover the delights of James, tragic toasts from Arcade Fire, multicolored feast from the Flaming Lips, and disco burgers flipped by LCD Soundsystem.

Above is from the program, I think there is something lost in the translation. If you are really interested in finding out all the details about the event you can go to their webpage summercase.com .

Anyways, Jason and I decided to join most of the population of young people of BCN (my new shorthand for Barcelona) for a raucous evening of music. We decided that one day was enough for our wallets…friday fun here we come! The show started in the late afternoon around 6 pm and ended around 6 am (yes that is not a typo, BCN starts late and parties all night). It was crazy. First the metro that takes you to the Forum was shutdown for construction, so we had to ride the trolley. Well us about 2,000 of our closest friends were mushed in like sardines so it was more than just transport, it was an experience in personal space. Next, the line to get in….well more like a gigantic clump of human cattle to get in. We were slowly pushed forward toward the series of checkpoints required. Full body cavity search, ticket scrutinization, and personal wristband certification. All were very entertaining. The search was actually very easy, we had decided to bring nothing in with us and had stowed all important documents in our pockets…..next. Tickets were not so easy. We got all the way to the front only to find out we were supposed to be in a separate line for Friday only tickets. A line that had no sign and was significantly smaller, ugh (we braved the giant mass for nothing). The wristband was the greatest invention of inefficiency ever. Aside…….

Jason and I have witnessed that in Spain it is more important to employ lots of people to do a job rather than create a more efficient way. For example instead of motorized street sweepers, they actually have hundreds of people whose job it is to hose down streets with water every night. Hey it gives one purpose.

Back to the concert…..They had a person to put a ribbon (not those crappy plastic wristbands) around your wrist and then a person with a giant metal crimper which you had to insert your hand into. I actually thought they might be taking off one of my fingers (maybe to ensure good behavior, or for DNA identification if things got out of hand). One by one that giant mass was filtered through to the concert grounds. Whew, we made it in. Let the drinking and debauchery begin.

First up Lily Allen, she smiles while you cry you know. Second, Phoenix….not the greatest showing for these guys. It could have been tighter. Next, The Flaming Lips! We just saw these guys in LA for New Years and this show was much better (sorry Nicole & Andrew). It could be because we managed to get within 30 meters of the stage. Arcade Fire was next. By this time the crowd was huge and impossible to maneuver through. We watched from the back. Jason managed to get pretty close for Bloc Party. To finish the night (I mean morning, it was 4 am) we went to dance to 2manydjs.

At the end of the night we still had to face to problem of transportation. The trolley was now 3,000 sardines and so were the buses. So we decided on a cab….hmmm problem was so were many of our concert companions. We walked for EVER, and finally lucked in on a cab dropping someone off in front of us. We climbed into bed on Saturday morning at 6:30 am. Good Night.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 23rd, 2007 at 1:28 am by Corrie and is filed under Spain. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.