Netherlands Adventures!: Radical Face

Before leaving for the Netherlands, I sat down and made a 30 before 30 list-- that is, thirty things I want to do by the time I turn thirty-years-old.  One of the things on that list was to attend a concert of my choosing, where I pay for my own ticket, and that I'm not working.  I've been to plenty of concerts because of generous friends and because I work at O'Shaughnessy Theater in St. Paul, but I've never considered any of those to be my first concert.  So I decided to amend that while in Europe.  Last week, I went to go see Radical Face, a group I adore, at the Paradiso in Amsterdam.

I was a little nervous because I knew that the Paradiso was a club, so I had this scary image of a giant wild party where everyone was super drunk and out of hand.  That's not my scene at all.  But once I got inside a the opener started playing (some guy from Australia, I didn't understand his name when he said it), I got a taste of what my first concert would be like (since Radical Face wasn't on yet) and I knew that I'd be just fine.  I settled down and tried my first taste of Heineken (tastes like you're drinking bread!  Tastes yummy!).  

Radical Face finally came on and I was in love with the whole concert-going experience.  I was here to listen to music that I wanted to listen to, so I found a good spot to stand and enjoyed hearing music that I knew (and enjoyed what I didn't know, even), feeling the beat in my entire body, and listening to everyone sing/hum along.  It was a really great night.  Unfortunately, I don't have the adequate words to describe just what an amazing night I had here.

Ben Cooper, lead singer

Here's some video that I took of the night:

They ended the concert with my favorite song and that made me float with happiness a little bit :)

A little context for this video: they came out again for an encore and tried to play a Radical Face song that they'd never performed in front of people before.  But twice, they crashed and burned while playing, so the decision was, "Well, if my songs aren't working out, we'll just have to play someone else's."  So they started playing "Not in Nottingham" and "Robinhood and Little John" from Disney's Robin Hood (the one with the frolicking animals).  The bassist and the miscellaneous instrument player played up the audience a lot-- it was hilarious.  A great end of the night!

Thanks for Reading!  Tot Ziens!

--Jude