It was Carly who gave me the heads up for this concert a few months before. Since I couldn’t find any worthwhile concerts to attend during summer, I quickly snapped it up online after hearing about it. There were plans to be there early to get the front row, so I booked a 9.30am train ticket to Manchester Piccadily. I met up with Carly at the station and we went to have food at the Arndale shopping mall food court. Since we had lots of time to kill, we ended up chatting for a couple of hours.
We started to make our way to Manchester Academy around 3hrs before the start of the concert. Along the way, we bought our packed dinner from McD to eat. When we arrived at Manchester Academy, there were a few people waiting in line already. Wow, I didn’t know 3 Doors Down were such a big hit in England..lol. Our waiting period was made complicated when it started to rain. It wasn’t a heavy downfall but it was potent enough to make one wet. We squeezed ourselves to the side pavement with a thin shelter. It rained for quite a while before the grey clouds passed away. By then, two queues had already formed, one on the left entrance and we were standing on the right entrance. It looks like one of the lines is gonna get short-changed in entering early. It turned out in the end that my line was allowed to proceed in first! Ah, I felt sorry for the other line because they would have to join my line’s queue which by now would have extended beyond the student union.
When we entered, there was already a first row there which I assume is the people with VIP pass. But we didn’t get it too bad at second row. For the opening band, we had a British hard punk rock band from Brighton called the Crave. Although the doors were opened, 3 Doors Down did not start playing until around 9.15am. Their status as an internationally recognised band is apparent. After the Crave had departed, the stage was cleared of all wires. 3DD’s stage set was clean because all of them were using wireless instruments.
Well, 3DD is one rock band which I would regard as a nostalgic reminder of the high school days of my generation. During the early 2000s, 3DD was prominent with Here Without You and Kryptonite. I wouldn’t say I’m familiar with all of their other songs like how I am with Paramore or Muse but 3DD makes good listening. Another one that’s worth listening to is Away From the Sun. The 3DD band members ain’t young anymore. They look like they’re going into their 40s already and somehow the lead singer Bradley Arnold gave an “apek-ish” aura when he came out in his white singlet. Somehow, the song list for the concert got passed around the audience and as expected, Kryptonite was left to the last during the encore period. I have fond memories of course, of Kryptonite because when I was in Sec 1 at SJI, I saw it being performed live by my Sec 4 seniors. While “Holiday” was the threshold of me getting into the rock scene, “Kryptonite” was actually my personal prototype of that inspiration.
I was getting a bit worried at first on the late starting time because I may end up missing my train at 11.30pm. Thankfully, it ended just on the dot at 11pm, giving me ample time to walk from the academy to Manchester Oxford station, which is of a considerable distance. Ahh, it was a good concert and yesh, yet another one to the list. The only thing that I lament about is that thanks to some bungling up in phone numbers, my new Panasonic FZ45 camera did not arrive on time for the concert. And silly me did not borrow Henna’s camera as a back-up plan, thanks to some bad overconfidence that the new camera will arrive in time. As a result, I had to record concert footage with the lousy video recorder from my Nikon camera. Ahhhh, I’m not pleased. This is not what I envision for my last rock concert outing in Europe. I’ll have to hunt harder on the net for one last big bang rock concert where I can utilise my new HD camera gear at least once.
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