LUDO concert September 28th

I absolutely love the band LUDO from their masterful lyrics to their sweeping melodies, catchy tunes, dramatic flair and humorous stories. I mean, what band do you know of that sings about, self loathing pirates, winking cyclopes, robots and cyborgs, parading skelletons, dreams of manta rays, true love, banking robbing with the girl you love, and all that topped with whipped cream? Who wouldn't love that? I feel extreemly lucky that D.L. White introduced me to them about a year ago. Her blog Storm In A Tea Cup often features LUDO as her muscial interlude. She also sent me a copy of each of their albums about a month before the concert. What a wonderful surprise that was. I have been listening to all four albums over and over ever since.

The self titled LUDO(2003), Broken Bride (their rock opera from 2005), Your Awful I Love You (2008) and the brand new Prepair the Preparations(2010).

I was very excited to discover that LUDO would be in my hometown as part of their tour in September 2010. We had to attend, even though I have not been to a concert since the Police in 2008. D.L. White was able to travel and attend the concert with us. What an amazing night ensued. Here are some pictures to document this fantastic concert during the "Prepare The Preparations" tour.

They opened the concert with the main theme from "Never Ending Story" (which I had not heard since I was a kid and LUDO admittedly say they are all big fans of 80's music, so this was quite fitting) and traveled right into "Go-Getter Greg" about a guy who is a bit obsessive over a girl who has moved into his apartment complex. Greg is a bit of a stalker, but it's a humorous song with funny lyrics and a very catchy chorus. Watching Andrew Volpe's facial expressions when he sings makes the song even that much more humorous.

Next it was on to one of my all time favorite LUDO songs, Hum-Along which tells the story of unrequited love which includes an imagined journey which spans being kidnapped by pirates, and singing to jaguars in twelve bars. My favorite line in that song: "And between the jungle and the stars, you sing nonsense songs in 12 bars to me / And in my sleep I hum along / You'll never hear this song / You'll never see the movie in my head."

Drunken Lament a song about drinking away the pain of a break up, and I just adored "Too Tired To Wink", which has lyrics that are impressively complicated, and reminds me of something from the mind of Lewis Carrol. For example, check out this line: "I stored a cyclops for a week with hard-tack in the clink / If ever he would bat a lid I thought it was a wink / But the world is flush with monocular mush and dingbats to despise / You find they're not thinking, just narrowly blinking, / But never quite cleaning their eyes."




Later on they performed "Lake Pontchartrain" which is a fantastic LUDO song, telling a story about a guy and his two friends who discover what is really at the bottom of the lake during a dark and stormy night. Tim Convey, the keyboard player made sure to get the audience all riled up to sing toghether: "Come down to Lake Pontchartrain / Rest your soul and feed your brain /That's where you will get to see everything the water can be" and watching Andrew's facial expressions was hilarious during the "scary" parts of the story.



Tim Convy also took charge of the whipped cream spraying during their "Whipped Cream" song as we all did the funny "Whipped Cream" dance from their video.

"Anything For You", was a great change of pace and Andrew and Tim Ferrell shared the mic.



At some point there was a break in the music that I am a bit confused about. I still didn't understand all that "MIKEY!!!" stuff between Andrew and another guy from a different band named Mikey. You just had to be there for that one I guess and then they all got into a dog pile during a long guitar solo of Tim Ferrell's. It was a bunch of boys and guitars all over the place, but they were able to untangle themselves to finish with "Love Me Dead" much to the delight of the entire audience.



I have never seen an audience who could sing their hearts out to almost every word of every song. You could feel how much everyone loved LUDO. We cheered and cheered. When the house lights came back up everyone gave up cheering eventually and we figured that was the end of the concert, but LUDO returned to shock us with "Girls On Trampolines" which they swore they were NOT going to sing. Haha, jokes on us! Thanks for the unexpected oncore!


The actual set list:

Go-Getter Greg
Hum Along
Drunken Lament
Too Tired to Wink
Topeka
Lake Pontchartrain
Rotten Town
Part I: Broken Bride
Whipped Cream
Horror of Our Love
Anything for You
Save Our City
Good Will Hunting By Myself
Love Me Dead

Encore:
Girls on Trampolines

After the concert, and much to our delight and surprise the band members signed autographs, took picture with fans and talk to everyone. It was amazing to get to meet these tallented guys and we couldn't help snapping some photos of them. I got my CD signed by each member.

Andrew Volpe (Lead Singer) and us. We were total nerds talking to him, but he was cool anyway. I am sure they are used to fans being silly and forgetting what they really want to say. I've never met anyone famous before, so I was pretty star struck and I couldn't think of anything intellengent except, "Your show was fantastic!" I can think of about a thousand things I would like to say now, but at the time I was just giddy from the concert experience. Maybe next time I'll keep my head together better.

Matt Polermo (Percussionist) and my husband. They had a nice conversation.


Tim Convy (Keyboardist) He called me a "sweetie."

Tim Ferrell (Lead Guitar)