A night of disappointment with fangirls and the Arctic Monkeys

Photo by Aurelien Guichard, via flickr 

Itzel Basualdo/Staff Writer

As much as it hurts my wallet to admit, I would not have paid $100 to attend the Arctic Monkeys concert at The Fillmore on Miami Beach, had I known that I would have had Redfoo standing in front of me the entire time.

I wish I could provide you, my fellow readers, with a decent and proper review of this concert, but alas I cannot.

Despite the multiple hindrances that included an encounter with Redfoo, spitting in Hermione Granger’s hair, and witnessing an exorcism, there is one underlying reason the Arctic Monkey’s concert did not live up to my expectations. And no, you can’t blame it on the alcohol. You can blame it on the fangirls.

Thursday January 30th seemed more like a “Teachers’ Planning Day,” rather than an average-rainy-school-day-with-an-alternative-rock-band-performing-at-The-Fillmore Thursday.

My friends and I arrived with high spirits, maybe some spirits in our pockets, and with Subway sandwiches in hands to picnic. The world-renowned, alternative band had returned to Miami, promoting their new album “AM” (which, in my opinion, is not their best work).

A few steps behind us were a group of girls, who looked like Beliebers-gone-grunge, with their moms. And right behind us was a twelve-year-old promiscuous girl, smoking a cigarette and expressing her desire to “hook up with a guy” at the concert.

Fast-forward a few hours and the doors of The Fillmore have opened. The preteens standing in line, now free of any parental guidance, ran rabidly and screeching like the blood-thirsty zombies of World War Z. My friends and I had no choice but to join the stampede or face the floor and be trampled. We rushed inside the venue, and five hours of waiting led us to being three feet from the rail, or roughly eight feet from the stage.

The opening band set the certainly unsettling mood that would persist throughout the night. The Orwells, a group of four boys hardly a year older than me, killed the stage – literally. Frontman, Mario Cuomo, nearly staged live suicide to further heighten and enforce the morbid message of their songs. The Orwells also gave us a hairy trauma. Cuomo also wanted to actually provide us with material memorabilia, and also evoke gagging, by bestowing us with a piece of his albino DNA – a lock of white hair he yanked off on stage. After bending down, his buttocks facing the audience, and aiming the microphone at his butthole, Cuomo really lived up to his aim to “treat his fans right,” by farting on their faces.

Despite the suicidal and schizophrenic nature of their performance, The Orwells were nonetheless passionate and relishing in their divergent melodies. The band members interacted with the audience and made their energy evident.

No one was prepared for the avalanche of fan-girls that was to come once the Arctic Monkeys walked on stage. They opened quickly with their most recent hit, “Do I Wanna Know,” which had the crowd screeching. (The shrieks of hundreds of girls, particularly the female abomination who was also using my head as an armrest, are responsible for the partial deafness I suffer from today. Curse you all.)

The whole concert I battled to get Shirley Temple off my back, dodged, and stretched my neck to giraffe like lengths to get a peek at the Arctic Monkey’s lead singer, Alex Turner, who was probably born of the virgin Mary and defines heavenly perfection. From the little my eyes could see, Turner sported the greaser style he most recently adopted.

Although I lost my sense of sight, I certainly managed to note that the Monkey’s played at a much slower pace. The tempo was permissible for their “AM” songs, as they aren’t as fast-paced as some of their classics. However, even “Fluorescent Adolescent” was played in a much calmer fashion, in comparison to how they played it the last time they were in South Florida, back in 2011. And despite Turner, and the rest of the band’s, minor interaction with the crowd, they had effortlessly subdued us under their spell.

The Monkeys focused on their new album – which undeniably did have a lot of hits and thumbs up from the fans. They brushed up on their past album, “Suck It And See” – which is in essence the opposite of “AM,” with it’s cheery and uplifting melodies. This new album took some of the spotlight away from drummer, Matt Helders. The lights and show were focused on Turner – there appeared to be a haze all around him.

It is not so much the Arctic Monkeys that I am disappointed with, but with the concert ambience as a whole. Some of you may be shunning me as a brat, others probably stopped reading when you hit the first sentence (I know who you are, fan girls); but if you had met Alex Turner, had Matt Helders wave at you mid-performance, and had stood front row that one night back in 2011, I think you’d be disappointed too.

itzel.basualdo@fiusm.com