Adventures with The Frames by Girl Kyle

I was particularly excited about this week's adventure. Boy Kyle and I went to NYC to see The Frames. If you have never heard of them then I suggest that you go onto youtube right now and listen to some of their songs. I first got into them after watching the movie Once which came out in 2007. Glen Hansard, the lead singer of the band, plays a busker on the streets of Dublin and meets a fellow musician from the Czech Republic. The music in this movie is incredible. I unfortunately have never had the opportunity to see them live before. Boy Kyle was lucky enough to see Glen Harnsard's side project, Swell Season, about 2 years ago. Time went by achingly slow since we bought the tickets about 2 months ago. Kyle's cousin, Sarah, was gracious enough to let us crash at her apartment so we didn't have to get a hotel. This was proving to be a great weekend.
The train ride into the city was fine. When we got to Penn Station, we had no idea where to go from there. Boy Kyle contacted his brother to find out the easiest route to get to Terminal 5 where the band was performing. Google's directions were so convoluted that we just decided to walk there. We had to walk 22 blocks through the city. It wouldn't have been so bad if it wasn't for the ridiculous amount of people and the very odd smells. We got to the club early even after we almost lost each other about 15 times in the crowds. We celebrated our achievement with two pints of Guinness. We figured it was fitting since we were seeing an Irish band. We were able to get incredible spots on the balcony. No one was obstructing our view and we were able to see the stage clearly. Whenever Kyle or I went to visit the bar or the bathroom, we had many people try to squeeze their way into our spot. We had to be aggressive in guarding our spots. I would have punched someone in the face if they tried to squeeze their way past me and obstruct my view. (I really wouldn't have of course, but it would have been very tempting.) There was one opening act that wasn't too bad. Thankfully they only played about 4-5 songs. Then The Frames got on stage and I freaked out. I was jumping up and down and yelling and clapping. Boy Kyle just stood there with a big smile on his face. It reflected our personalities perfectly.



The Frames are absolutely amazing live. Glen Hansard has an incredible presence while on stage. You can tell that he gets lost in the performance. I love when musicians do that because you can see that even though they've been playing for 20 years, they can still put just as much emotion into it as when they first started playing many years ago. I wasn't disappointed with their set list, either. They played for about 2.5 hours and had around 4-5 encores. The crowd was going crazy the whole time. It was a very exciting show. (Minus all the loud drunk people and then the sober people shushing even louder than the loud drunk people.)



We got out of the club around 11:30 and knew we had to walk back to Penn Station. The walk back was just as crazy as the walk to the show. After seeing that much of NYC I have come to the conclusion that I don't really enjoy it. It's too much for me to handle. It's too loud, there are too many people in one small area, and it smells pretty awful. I could go on. Jeez, I sound like an old lady. I've been on the Cape for far too long. The train ride back wasn't bad. We were both exhausted and couldn't wait to get to Sarah's apartment and sleep for a long time.
We had a fantastic time and I've never seen a show as good as that one. I really really hope that they will come back soon enough so I can enjoy their spectacular performance again.