This weekend was all about the beautiful weather, exploring Brisbane and some Swedish music at the Brightside. Brisbane delivered beautiful late winter warm temperatures and showed off its best side to my mom.
The string-quartet-in-candlelight-environment idea was just too good to not do again. After Mikael brought me for my birthday to the Rings & Dragons tribute, we decided to take my mom along up to Brisbane to listen to Phoenix Collective play tribute to Queen. We all love Queen, so this was a given!
This concert was by Phenix Collective, a string quartet from Sydney and wow, I am so glad we went to these guys version rather than the same we listened to last time (Paradiso Strings). The lead had such an incredible way of engaging with the audience and his introduction to each song made the experience so much better!
They had very strong opinions on Spotify, so their music is only available in concert format or on CD. I can’t remember the last time I had a computer with a CD reader, so concert format by candlelight was definitely amazing.
At one point, early on in the concert, Mikael leaned over to me and asked if the guy sniveling next to him had a cold or if he was crying. I couldn’t tell, but we later discovered that that guy was a hardcore fan and was crying almost all throughout the concert. It was really good! Goosebumps for some songs, for sure.
The present came in the form of a very cosy concert a month later.
My first birthday in Australia has come and gone. And even if it wasn’t optimal with having partner with the cold, it still turned out to be a really great day.
In April, back in Sweden, we bought tickets to a concert that would take place at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre five months later. We were looking forward to this night for so long and it finally arrived.
The doors opened at 4:30 pm already and it said in the email we received a few days previously to arrive early to ensure a parking spot. 1 pm was a bit too early so we drove out to the ocean, Shorncliffe, where we had lunch at Matthew Thomas instead. There was a big pier where lots of people were fishing. The beach was not so impressive though, but Brisbane is not famous for its beaches. Not like Gold Coast. The Entertainment Centre was a bit north of Brisbane CBD with plenty of parking. Leaving after the event, even with thousands of people, was not a problem at all. Pros of having such an arena a bit outside of the city compared to in the middle of CBD where everyone would go on the public transit system and completely clog it.
Parkway Drive didn’t enter the stage until 9 pm, so there were three other bands warming up before: Void Vision, The Ghost Inside, and I Prevail. Haven’t listened to them, but they set the mood.
Parkway entered the stage from the back and walked through the crowd, they really engaged with the audience!
The stage had three parts: in the middle of the crowd, the main one, and the bridge that went up and down every now and then. They started in the middle, playing together on the very small platform and after their first song, they dropped the screen and revealed the massive stage behind. Show-wise, it was incredible! They jumped around, changed clothes, interacted with the crowd and seemed to really have a great time. There were so many special effects. Lots of fire, even falling water, rotating drummer wheel, their logo on fire. Oh yes, did I mention that they had a bunch of pyrotechnics?
I have to admit that I only started listening to them when I met Mikael and he introduced me to them five years ago so I mostly only listened to their last two albums and probably could have had goosebumps at more occasions then just with the new songs. For example, they did a long medley of all their heavy songs from their first album. Pretty impressive but nothing I recognized unfortunately.
Another really interesting thing about this concert was the people attending it. Mostly, they were around our age. But we also so really old people. And really young! The girl in front of us was probably around 10-12. But several rows before us, there was this tiny curly haired girl, probably not more than 4. Completely digging it, fist bumping and doing the 🤘 signs with her tiny hands from the lap of her father. How cute isn’t that?
This was the small middle stage where they played Prey early on.
The main stage with steel beams. Not sure what the setting was supposed to be like. But I got the impression that it was supposed to be a dystopian future.
This guy, Jeff Ling, really made this whole evening and experience more real. Since we met him in Byron Bay on the Community Market a month and a half ago, seeing him with his two young ones and he was just so down to earth and friendly. Having met him and seeing him on stage, doing his epic thing was just so amazing! It made the whole thing real, yet at the same time not.
During one song, Winston just popped up in the middle of the crowd.
And he picked up a young boy on his shoulders and did the song like that while encouraging everyone around them to run in a circle. That kid must have had the best night of his life!
Only a few hours after I landed on Sunday I got a phone call from my uncle. He put my youngest cousin on and we talked for a bit, then she asked me if I wanted to join her and her dad to go to the One Direction concert in Gothenburg two days later. They are not my favorite band, but concerts are always fun, they have some good songs, and it would have been great to see Malin again. So I didn’t hesitate, I said yes right away! The plan was for her dad to come too, but then they found a friend of Malin, but she decided she didn’t want to the same day, and her dad didn’t have the plans in Borås today that he thought, so he didn’t go either. Just me and Malin.
I met up with her downtown, went to Åhlens where I bought nail polish remover and three nail polishes so I can finally try and do the gradient sunset polish that I’ve been wanting to do for a while now. We then went back to my place, ordered pizza for dinner and hung out for a bit to rest our feet. Mom drove us to Ullevi. We missed the first warm-up The Foo. But we weren’t too sad about it. The second band was McBusted, they were okay.
By that time the clouds were gone, and the promise of rain had gone away. When One Direction came on stage at 9pm the sun was shining, almost a complete blue sky. It made the evening so much better! They played for an hour and a half and I recognized most songs, but there were still lots of them I had never heard before. They played my two favorites, Stockholm Syndrome and Night Changes. They ended the whole thing with Best Song Ever. It was a great concert, and I have to admit that I now have an even bigger crush on Louis. I can only say wow!
During the show they kept saying they loved Sweden and I don’t know why. But I am pretty sure that I have heard them say that before, that Sweden’s their favorite place to perform. They have been here pretty often lately. Harry kept saying he loved köttbullar (meatballs, with a very good accent). They were cute :).
The Foo.
Haha, this girl is too funny. Malin and I called her Antenna Girl!
Harry is actually not too shabby either now when he let his hair grow out.
I think 80% of my pictures was of him (Louis)…
Waterfight between Louis and Liam.
Malin and I :).
After the concert, mom picked us up and I drove Malin and her friend to Kungshamn where they were on a camp for the week. It took 1.5 hours, we got there at 1am, and then I got back home at 2:45am. To keep myself awake while still being jetjlagged and having a cold (I’ve decided that it is a cold since I have a little bit of fever aswell), I listened to music, sang a long, and ate my whole bag of candy I bought yesterday. I do feel a little bit bad, but now on the other hand I got that out of the way and can get start being healthy. I don’t have that urge to eat sweets anymore like I did in California. That is great because I have 10 more pounds to lose.
I went straight to bed, didn’t wake up until noon and spent some time in bed with the cats. And now I am about to head downtown to meet up with Axel, haven’t seen him since November, I am excited! And I will check off another Swedish thing on my list, fika :).
Bemm 