Hugo’s blog

Ten years ago, while I was living in England, I heard on the radio Placebo play Bruise Pristine at the Glastonbury festival, and I liked their sound and went to HMV buy their eponym first album. I have followed their music ever since, but with the feeling that every new album is not as good as the previous one, though the All-Music Guide seems to disagree with me. Anyway, went I saw that they were playing in a small venue in San Francisco, I thought that I just had to go. It’s pretty rare to be able to see Placebo a couple of meters away from the band in Europe (just like it was for The Tragically Hip).

When we arrived, I noticed that I was taller than most people, which reminded me of a No Doubt show that I went to years ago. Basically, I seemed older than pretty much anybody else.

The support act was Evaline. They certainly had a lot of energy on stage. The drummer was impressive, and the singer loved to jump everywhere, especially on top of his keyboard. I’m impressed by how much weight a keyboard stand is apparently able to handle. Anyway, their music was not bad, but I guess that it was not quite my cup of tea.

Then Placebo came on stage. They mainly played songs from Meds, but also played older songs such as Without You I’m Nothing, and even songs from the first album such as Bionic or I Know.

However, I can’t say that I have been impressed by their performance. Yes, Brian Molko was sweaty, but it was not so different from listening to the CDs at home. Basically, they didn’t move very much on stage. I had the feeling that Stefan Olsdal was thinking: OK, during this song, why don’t I tryi to be on the front right of the stage for a change? And there was hardly any communication with the audience other than a How the fuck are you San Francisco?

So I’m a little disappointed by this show, and considering that my interest in Placebo is from 10 years ago, and that most people around me might have been in their early twenties, maybe you should stop listening to Placebo when you reach 30.

I have a bunch of photos on Flickr. I also have a couple of videos that I’ll put online as soon as I figure out how to download an 8.1MB video from it when 8MB is the limit for files sent via Bluetooth or get Missing Sync’s media conduit to work.