There is no youtube; there is only the drive there. The mystery and intrigue have wrought you into a nervous wreck: the warm-up only exacerbates the issue, but the half hour of set up and intermission tunes is soothing. Silence. Then the booming drone of Junior Parker that never ends; the anticipation is absurd. Smoke drifts from the stage through a pulsating glow, and a humming seeps below, growing into a screeching synthesiser loop. With every second and ambient cymbal swells the terrifying suspense. And the moment arrives: the ground shakes, the stage comes to life, and numbers flash all across the walls; six times rings the chant, seven. The intensity mounts and a giant light blinds you: here we go.

Everything falls out of place, and you are swallowed by a barrage of sound, the dancer's call to arms. Looking up, you see a swirl of hair and exotic yellow sunglasses; this mass clutches the MPC, and a snare drum impossibly flares out louder and louder; then shakes again the ground. Squelches fire off into the room, and the beat is stripped bare. "MUSIC" -- there's a gun in your face.

The 1999 show was truly a work of art, despite what Frans (and I think paulie?) might claim. Surrender is their third album -- every song performed is played beyond its entirety. And with each show the drama is refined and made more profound.

As wickedly awesome as the current show may be, it's really not necessary to play every song, albeit in shortened form. Six albums in? Surprise everybody. Reinvigorate panic! With the advent of youtube, bit torrent and flickr, the setlist and timing are no longer so mysterious. Change it up; mess us up?

1999 ROCKED THE BLOCK

I'll have to get me some of the same drugs you took.

Looks like someone was taking a trip through the site's memory bank?

Either that or people are still annoyed nearly 9 years after-the-fact that Frans and Paulie weren't exactly big fans of Surrender...

Who the fuck are are Frans and Paulie?

paulieslim? the forum member from waaaaay back when?

Yes, Biff - you are correct!

Slipvin, Frans and Paulieslim were on the old Chemical Brothers mailing list.

w00tie mcw00t! I win a prize! I want the purple gorilla on the left... no the other left... above that one...

Paulieslim, that name was in the attics of my memory. Makes me feel like a geezer-member, regardless of my unimpressive post count. Frans I think I remember too but I'm not 100% certain.

hehehe, yes frans and paulieslim and surrender. moreso the surrender tour... Ed eating a sandwich ;)

I was essentially just that saying I love how internally each track is its own song and totally distinct, even though they mix into each other so sweetly. Something nice about a 12 or 13 track set, as opposed to, say, 17-20. I mean, if the 12 track set is personalised to "your" gig, it feels specialer. (not that surrender tour was a different set list for most gigs -- just refinements and changes over time)

I still don't get it.

Yeah, Surrender didn't exactly go over too well with a large (and vocal) portion of the people on the mailing list. Biff, how could you not remember Frans, the king of da flame!

I joined up on that mailing list a few months after Surrender came out, in January 2000. I was surprised at how poorly the album was received, I knew there'd be some haters but to be honest I was even more shocked at the amount of flames and random stuff that made in my inbox every day. Over 100 emails sometimes on any given day - this was before spam and spam filters and all of that. :lol: There was a kid on there from S. America (Brazil I think) who signed up to the mailing list using his work email address. The kid went on vacation, and there were so many emails it jammed his employer's email servers and the kid ended up losing his job, hahaha. I shouldn't laugh but it's kind of funny. We talked about just everything, sort of like here - shows we'd go to, things we did on the weekend, parties, family stuff. We all got to know each other quite well, one of my closest friends in the real world originated from the list. Then you had people that would join the list and get upset that we were shooting the shit about off topic stuff then try to flame us for not being all Chems all the time. I admit I was a little scared of some of the people in the beginning, didn't say much til I was able to feel everyone out and test the waters. Some of us still keep in touch, us left over stragglers from the old list days. Most have moved on from the Chemical Brothers or whatever. Frans could outflame the best of em, he's chased away a lot of people and all that - but he's quite a good guy.

Bah - ah yes memories. I'm babbling and reminiscing and all of that, don't mind me.

But I do see what you mean, GLAKO. It would be cool if you got to revisit the Chems again in the live realm some day. Each gig is special and feels personal, if you let it.

there will always be the nay sayers out there when dyoh came out, I'm sure people were wining it wan't like epd, when surrender came out there's that, come with us and there was definitely not with out some nay sayers, golden path/the singles... don't get me started with that again, ptb still, and watn had a few people wining and so will the next album. isn't history great for predicting the future?

The next album? ........................

Electronic Battle Weapon 10?

...

Whatever happened to that anyways? I thought the Chems were going to get that out to us by the end of the Summer. Hmmm, well I'm currently happy with the newest hub-bub to stir the boards, but now I'm getting a little anxious for this release, whenever it will be.

PTB, yuck.

mmm PTB!