GiB#2 | Party in a Steel Factory! 18/12/2009

Mashrou3 Leila gave a fun concert last night. Probably not their best musical performance, for they could use a little more presence on stage, and the new songs of the (finally completed) album are merely more of the same. Good thing there was the unique location to make up for it! The concert was in a huge warehouse inside a steel factory in Qarantina, partying in a garage/construction type décor, very trippy indeed! I hope they open up this venue again for a DJ gig some day, because the sound really did not serve well this band, it was terrible in some places, but it could be great with the right equipment and / or sound engineer.

The other cool thing besides the venue was the crowd. Attendance was much higher than the organizers had expected, so much that they ran out of free albums giveaways, then they ran out of drinks, and then of printed tickets! They had only planned for 1,000 people but probably drew 1,500. They should have counted with all the people who are back for the holidays… A funny thing happened when they were out of tickets, they used a burj hammoud happy holidays flyers for LL5,000 instead, and then when those ran out as well the rest of us came in for free – thanks guys we owe you one! But my favorite part in all of this was the lots and lots of cute twenty-something guys, with lots of GiBs too! But perhaps less than one could expect, given that at least two of the band’s seven are gay… wish there were more GiBs in the indie scene...

Oh and can someone explain to me the 5-minute Misba7-type  performance (GiB belly dancing) on stage out of the blue?