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If they ever decide to return to the British burg after last night’s show, that is. Apparently an audience member at last night’s Nottingham Arena show decided to get up close and personal with frontman Win Butler, throwing a projectile at him during the performance of “Neighborhood #3 (Power Out).”
“He dropped his guitar, the mic fell over and he flicked the Vs in the general direction of the thrower,” says DiS scribe Rob Webb, “before continuing with the song. He even adapted the lyrics to ‘where’d you go, no, seriously, where’d you go you fucker’.”
Heading offstage before the encore, the band returned to another missile as they ran through ‘Rebellion (Lies)’. Win stopped playing, promised that the band were “never fucking playing Nottingham again” before finishing the song and exiting back into the bowels of the Arena.
According to a commenter on This Is Nottingham, the first projectile thrown was, in fact, a shoe, and one that could travel long distances at that:
It was a shoe rather than a bottle, and it was hurled from a way back in the crowd. Security found a guy with one shoe on at the end of the gig and he denied all knowledge of the incident. They didn’t give him the missing one back. Two more projectiles landed on stage after that, which is when Win said “one more thing and we’re never playing in Nottingham again”. Fair enough. Apart from that, fantastic show.
p_j_f, London
I can’t help but wonder if the guy’s friends throw the later projectiles in a half-hearted effort to get their pal’s shoe back. But either way, this sounds like a whole new arm of the “Hey, Asshole!” museum needs to be built ASAP.
Arcade Fire boycott Nottingham after missile attack [Drowned In Sound]
I saw Smashing Pumpkins play about 15 years ago (Holy Crap, I’m old) and someone threw a shoe. Billy Corgan ended the show. Not that I blame him really.
Come on, man. At least throw it during “Neon Bible” or something.
NOTHING beats Perry Farrell’s classic whine at an LA show back in 1990, as preserved on Kettle Whistle and elsewhere, after a guy threw a Birkenstock at him.
“The guy’s a real moron: he doesn’t even understand fashion!”
I was at a Pearl Jam show (Indio, CA, Nov. 93) that became somewhat infamous when an isolated shoe or two for some reason turned into a torrent of footwear, hitting almost all the members of the band at one point or another. Eddie Vedder took one to the head in the middle of a “please stop throwing shoes” speech.
The Breeders @ Lollapalooza circa 94(?). They took the stage and got about 30 seconds deep into “Divine Hammer”, and then someone threw a bottle. Kim stopped playing, declared the thrower an “asshole”, San Diego a “wasteland”, and the band left. The right thing to do, sure, but can’t a guy at least get a chorus?
Who throws a shoe?
I saw the Goo Goo Dolls open for Bush in ‘96 (stop laughing) and Johnny Rzeznik got hit with a shoe. He stopped the song, picked it up, said “somebody’s gonna have to walk home with only one shoe,” laughed, and they went straight back in. That’s the right way to play that.