VnV Nation

My favourite band is VnV Nation, hands down. Nothing compares to them for me. The very first song I heard was Carbon. I saw the lyrics on a friends msn and was intrigued, so I asked him about it and he sent me the song. I definitely noticed it was different from most of what I had heard. This was in November of 2005. At the time I was feeling really shitty about myself, I was making poor choices about a lot of things, had no goals, and just felt really dark and lonely. I started looking for some new music genres and VnV Nation took my mind off everything I was going through at the time. The best part about them is their variety of sounds and total amount of music.

In the summer of 2009, I think it was June 30th.. Close to that date anyway, I got to see them live in Toronto at the Pheonix. I was so excited when my bf told me he bought the tickets, I had never been to a concert before, well, I had stumbled upon free concerts at beaches or at Niagara Falls on new years, but those were amateurs. I had never paid for tickets and gone somewhere just to see a band, and this was my all time favorite.

I was pumped and couldn't wait to leave. We parked our car at the Hamilton Go station and got on the Go Train without buying tickets. My bf has gone to To to see concerts and such a lot and he has almost never bought tickets, or been checked for tickets, so we didn't bother. The morning we left, we realized that there were no Go Trains to bring us home after the concert, so I bought us a hotel room at Novotel.. When we got into To, we checked into our hotel room which was really nice, and then I think we walked around for a bit. I can't remember exactly how the events before and after the concert went. I do remember that we did get pizza at one point and we walked by the Hockey Hall of Fame. It was really hot out. I also remember at some point we were in a taxi and it was still daylight out.

When we did get to the Pheonix, we expected a line so we arrived really early and ended up being right at the front of it. Most of the people who showed up were wearing heavy black boots and clothes, major cyber goth kinda stuff. The guy in front of us was wearing a hawaiian shirt. We offered him the last of our pizza (we bought a medium size and it was too much for us) and he was happy to have it. We then got into a conversation with him about his floral shirt and about all the concerts hes been to and how many times hes seen VnV Nation. I was feeling a little nervous at this point that I was going to get pushed around or end up not being able to see anything since I am so short. The guy was waiting for a girl and she showed up soon after. She was visiting from Scotland and was really nice. She was heavyset with red hair but had a really alluring personality. ( I ended up running into her after the concert in the club on our way out and wish now that I had stayed to hang out with her and her guy friend now. To at least have gotten their names would have been nice. )

While we were standing in line we saw a lot of people going in and out of the theatre, we thought some of the guys looked really stupid in their outfits, they tuned out to be one of the intro bands and they were so shitty. No one liked their music.

When we were finally let inside, we passed some stuff for sale, I went back and bought a VnV Nation sweater. My bf and I were right up against the stage, I didn't realize the Pheonix was such a small place inside. I got my close spot between two speakers (or something) and stood my ground as people filled in the spaces around us.

The first band to play was called Ayria. I guess they are somewhat known. I had never heard of them but they were good. It was a female singer and she was hot. After them was the shit band that I don't know the name of nor do I care.. then was finally VnV Nation. Before they started I took a lot of pictures of what was on the stage and such.

When the time came, the crowd pushed right up against my bf and I, but I didn't care at all, we all shared a common love for my fave band and I was happy to feel like part of something, and that all these people I could connect with on at least one subject. It went black in the theater for a second, then as some random guitar riff that I never heard before started to play, a huge screen behind the stage showed a VnV  poster and the guitar riffed streamed off and then Joy began to play. It was a fantastic energy boost. I never screamed so loud and hard in my life and yet I couldnt hear it in the uproar of vocal emotion from all around. It was overwhelming. Each song that played was wonderful to hear live, it was nice knowing all the lyrics to every song. Ronin Harris delivered his performance with non stop energy and enthusiasm, running and twirling back and forth on the stage, sweating out gallons all over us at the front. I never got tired and when it was over I felt a little sad, but that more fulfilled and satisfied that I had experienced such a perfect concert. At the end, Ronin threw a huge ragdoll into the crowd, it was no where near me. He also made a speech about how people outside of the theater will hear us all singing along to Perpetual.. the lyrics being "let there be, let there always be, never ending light".. he had us repeat this line over and over at least 10 times, laughing as he did so.. He said that he would like to read the articles written about so a huge crowd of goths and punks singing about "let there be never ending light"

I also got to shake Mark Jackson's hand, and next time I am determined to shake Ronin's. I would def get a VnV Nation logo tattoo somewhere on my body. Just not sure where. ;)

After the concert, my man and I were pretty much deaf, we had the worse ringing in our ears for days after, but it was worth it. We went back to our hotel room and crashed. The next day we looked up stuff we could do but didnt decided on anything. We thought it would be better to devote a whole day to the AGO or Science Centre another time.

On our way home, we didn't pay for tickets again for the Go Train. Sitting in the sun, my bf turned to me and said "somethings wrong, I just have a bad feeling". Seconds later, the door at the end of the car opened and ticket checkers were walking in. The train was coming to a stop so we quickly got off, for some reason we didnt jump onto another car and ended up waiting at this station for an hour for the next train. There was nothing around this place so we just sat on the platform and played on the laptop we brought. When the next train did come, there were more ticket checkers, this time we just hopped cars though. I think that next time, we will just buy tickets.

Anyway, here are some of the pictures I got. Most of my footage is movies.