THE DAY SILVER MET MUSE
WORDS CANNOT ADEQUATELY DESCRIBE WHAT HAPPENED TO ME.
But I'll try. Warning: this is long and fangirly and mostly me rambling.
So we got to Raleigh like 4:30ish, seeing as I had class in the morning. I met up with glitterati , and said hi to her--she was #12 in line and had gotten there at 7am. I, sadly, could not cut in the line to be with her, so I went over to the other, shorter line, where I met some guys who were UNC freshmen. After standing around in line for what felt like ages, the doors finally opened, we went inside, got our wristbands, and headed down to the pit. We got an amazingly good spot for getting in line so late--about fifth row from the stage. The stage itself and the towers were surprisingly smaller than I had pictured.
After more standing around and waiting, the lights finally turned off and the opening band Metric came on. I had listened to a few of their songs beforehand just to see what they sounded like and had, admittedly, been rather bored with them. Hearing them live, however, I was very impressed. It helped to imagine their singer as a blonde Alison Mosshart I think.
So then there was another period of waiting, and watching the techs at work, and then, finally, it was Muse time. As their introductory visuals played on the video screens, something seemed off. Instead of the usual "We Are The Universe" intro, I could hear bits of the beginning of Exogenesis Symphony. And sure enough, they opened their set with Exogenesis part 1 instead of Uprising, to all of our surprise. Resistance came after that, and then to everyone's amazement, Knights of Cydonia, the usual ending song, was third. And it just kept getting more and more amazing from there.
Highlights of the show itself included:
-The crazy setlist order, especially at the beginning. My friend Patrick and I were freaking out.
-Chris playing the Hysteria bassline right in front of us.
-United States of Eurasia. I just...wow. That was incredible.
-After USoE Matt kept the piano out and we were trying to guess what he'd play. Patrick thought Feeling Good, I was wishfully thinking they'd bring back Cave, but no, it was RULED BY SECRECY!! Which was DEFINITELY a highlight of the night. I'd seen videos of it live but NOTHING can compare to that explosion of sound that happened midway through.
-Helsinki Jam...I had been waiting for so long to finally hear it live and I did and it was beautiful.
-Undisclosed Desires, because that's always amazing forever.
-Clapping to Starlight
-That amazing Plug In Baby riff...and the giant eyeball balloons which I sadly did not get to pop or hit but the band did and it was amusing.
-Stockholm Syndrome. The first Muse song I ever heard. It was amazing. Even with the random shirtless guys moshing near me.
-When they started the encore with Uprising and had already played Knights of Cydonia, I wondered what they'd end with. I then thought...Take a Bow! And they did and it was great.
BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!!!
As I headed out of the arena after the show, planning on rushing outside to find the tour buses in hopes of meeting the band, I noticed a few girls gathered around one spot. I looked to see what was going on and soon recognized Tom Kirk, the band's media manager/longtime friend/photographer/videographer/all around cool guy who is loved very much by the fans. He is just as dorky and adorable in real life as I'd hoped. He signed my Resistance booklet (as well as several other people's stuff including a shoe, lol.)
So then I finally made my way out to the buses and met up with glitterati again as well as a couple of people she'd met in line. We stood around for...quite a while before anything interesting happened. First, Chris started replying to people on Twitter, saying that he was "in the bus smoking and drinking a coke." We tried all sorts of things to get the band to come out, from tweeting at Chris to making signs and running around like maniacs. We saw Chris leave the bus, go in the building, and come back out, but he paid us no attention. Of course we then realized that the entire band was not out of the building yet, as we saw Matt and Dom (the latter waved at us when we shouted at him) come out and go into the buses. We also spotted live keyboardist and former Gorillaz bass player Morgan Nicholls, and after shouting "WE LOVE YOU MORGAN" we were all highly amused to see a tweet from Chris saying "Morgan says hi."
Almost two hours went by. Several of the roadies were standing around in the parking lot and started playing a makeshift baseball game. They were soon joined by Chris, Morgan, and Tom, and then Dom.
And then, somewhere between one and two in the morning, it happened.
THEY CAME OVER TO SEE US.
It was just Chris and Dom at first, and they came right over to where we were standing. I was pretty much in shock at this point and don't recall what exactly happened, but I know we were all telling them about the things we did for them (drive from Florida, miss class, etc). They were very nice and signed our stuff and took pictures.
And then I turned my head to look back at the buses and suddenly Matt Bellamy was standing right there.
The rumors are indeed correct, that man is very short. He is also very adorable, I noticed him pulling leaves off of the bushes for no particular reason. He was talking to some people next to me and I briefly joined in their conversation. Matt took a picture of us on his phone. And then one of the others brought up his famous "Glitterati" guitar, which met its untimely doom a couple months ago. Matt confirmed that it was broken. I asked, "it fell off of the tower, didn't it?" to which he replied "yeah, it--wait. how did you know that?" I started laughing and told him, "oh we know everything." I will never ever forget that moment or the face he made when he asked me that. AND THEN I GOT A PICTURE WITH HIM (after realizing my phone camera wasn't going to work well enough) AND HE PUT HIS FACE LIKE RIGHT. NEXT. TO MINE. AND I DIED.
SO, TL;DR I MET MUSE AND IT WAS AMAZING AND I LOVE THEM FOREVER.
Just...wow. What an amazing night. Thank you Muse!!!!
Also, setlist:
Exogenesis: Symphony Part I (Overture)
Resistance
Knights of Cydonia
Supermassive Black Hole
(riff: The Star-Spangled Banner + ) Interlude + Hysteria (+ riff: Back in Black)
Unnatural Selection (+ riff: Township Rebellion)
Nishe
United States of Eurasia
Ruled By Secrecy
Helsinki Jam
Undisclosed Desires
Starlight
(riff: Undone - The Sweater Song) + Time Is Running Out (+ riff: Power of Soul) (+ riff: El Scorcho)
Plug In Baby
Uprising (extended)
Stockholm Syndrome (+ riff: School) (+ riff)
Take a Bow
(yeah that "COOL!" with the arrow pointing to Muse was written by Tom. XD)
But I'll try. Warning: this is long and fangirly and mostly me rambling.
So we got to Raleigh like 4:30ish, seeing as I had class in the morning. I met up with glitterati , and said hi to her--she was #12 in line and had gotten there at 7am. I, sadly, could not cut in the line to be with her, so I went over to the other, shorter line, where I met some guys who were UNC freshmen. After standing around in line for what felt like ages, the doors finally opened, we went inside, got our wristbands, and headed down to the pit. We got an amazingly good spot for getting in line so late--about fifth row from the stage. The stage itself and the towers were surprisingly smaller than I had pictured.
After more standing around and waiting, the lights finally turned off and the opening band Metric came on. I had listened to a few of their songs beforehand just to see what they sounded like and had, admittedly, been rather bored with them. Hearing them live, however, I was very impressed. It helped to imagine their singer as a blonde Alison Mosshart I think.
So then there was another period of waiting, and watching the techs at work, and then, finally, it was Muse time. As their introductory visuals played on the video screens, something seemed off. Instead of the usual "We Are The Universe" intro, I could hear bits of the beginning of Exogenesis Symphony. And sure enough, they opened their set with Exogenesis part 1 instead of Uprising, to all of our surprise. Resistance came after that, and then to everyone's amazement, Knights of Cydonia, the usual ending song, was third. And it just kept getting more and more amazing from there.
Highlights of the show itself included:
-The crazy setlist order, especially at the beginning. My friend Patrick and I were freaking out.
-Chris playing the Hysteria bassline right in front of us.
-United States of Eurasia. I just...wow. That was incredible.
-After USoE Matt kept the piano out and we were trying to guess what he'd play. Patrick thought Feeling Good, I was wishfully thinking they'd bring back Cave, but no, it was RULED BY SECRECY!! Which was DEFINITELY a highlight of the night. I'd seen videos of it live but NOTHING can compare to that explosion of sound that happened midway through.
-Helsinki Jam...I had been waiting for so long to finally hear it live and I did and it was beautiful.
-Undisclosed Desires, because that's always amazing forever.
-Clapping to Starlight
-That amazing Plug In Baby riff...and the giant eyeball balloons which I sadly did not get to pop or hit but the band did and it was amusing.
-Stockholm Syndrome. The first Muse song I ever heard. It was amazing. Even with the random shirtless guys moshing near me.
-When they started the encore with Uprising and had already played Knights of Cydonia, I wondered what they'd end with. I then thought...Take a Bow! And they did and it was great.
BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!!!
As I headed out of the arena after the show, planning on rushing outside to find the tour buses in hopes of meeting the band, I noticed a few girls gathered around one spot. I looked to see what was going on and soon recognized Tom Kirk, the band's media manager/longtime friend/photographer/videographer/all around cool guy who is loved very much by the fans. He is just as dorky and adorable in real life as I'd hoped. He signed my Resistance booklet (as well as several other people's stuff including a shoe, lol.)
So then I finally made my way out to the buses and met up with glitterati again as well as a couple of people she'd met in line. We stood around for...quite a while before anything interesting happened. First, Chris started replying to people on Twitter, saying that he was "in the bus smoking and drinking a coke." We tried all sorts of things to get the band to come out, from tweeting at Chris to making signs and running around like maniacs. We saw Chris leave the bus, go in the building, and come back out, but he paid us no attention. Of course we then realized that the entire band was not out of the building yet, as we saw Matt and Dom (the latter waved at us when we shouted at him) come out and go into the buses. We also spotted live keyboardist and former Gorillaz bass player Morgan Nicholls, and after shouting "WE LOVE YOU MORGAN" we were all highly amused to see a tweet from Chris saying "Morgan says hi."
Almost two hours went by. Several of the roadies were standing around in the parking lot and started playing a makeshift baseball game. They were soon joined by Chris, Morgan, and Tom, and then Dom.
And then, somewhere between one and two in the morning, it happened.
THEY CAME OVER TO SEE US.
It was just Chris and Dom at first, and they came right over to where we were standing. I was pretty much in shock at this point and don't recall what exactly happened, but I know we were all telling them about the things we did for them (drive from Florida, miss class, etc). They were very nice and signed our stuff and took pictures.
And then I turned my head to look back at the buses and suddenly Matt Bellamy was standing right there.
The rumors are indeed correct, that man is very short. He is also very adorable, I noticed him pulling leaves off of the bushes for no particular reason. He was talking to some people next to me and I briefly joined in their conversation. Matt took a picture of us on his phone. And then one of the others brought up his famous "Glitterati" guitar, which met its untimely doom a couple months ago. Matt confirmed that it was broken. I asked, "it fell off of the tower, didn't it?" to which he replied "yeah, it--wait. how did you know that?" I started laughing and told him, "oh we know everything." I will never ever forget that moment or the face he made when he asked me that. AND THEN I GOT A PICTURE WITH HIM (after realizing my phone camera wasn't going to work well enough) AND HE PUT HIS FACE LIKE RIGHT. NEXT. TO MINE. AND I DIED.
SO, TL;DR I MET MUSE AND IT WAS AMAZING AND I LOVE THEM FOREVER.
Just...wow. What an amazing night. Thank you Muse!!!!
Also, setlist:
Exogenesis: Symphony Part I (Overture)
Resistance
Knights of Cydonia
Supermassive Black Hole
(riff: The Star-Spangled Banner + ) Interlude + Hysteria (+ riff: Back in Black)
Unnatural Selection (+ riff: Township Rebellion)
Nishe
United States of Eurasia
Ruled By Secrecy
Helsinki Jam
Undisclosed Desires
Starlight
(riff: Undone - The Sweater Song) + Time Is Running Out (+ riff: Power of Soul) (+ riff: El Scorcho)
Plug In Baby
Uprising (extended)
Stockholm Syndrome (+ riff: School) (+ riff)
Take a Bow
(yeah that "COOL!" with the arrow pointing to Muse was written by Tom. XD)