I know it looks like 3 January, but the print faded, its actually 13 January

I first heard of Foster The People before all of you did, before they were played on Fly FM. So when I found out that they were coming down, I was pretty excited! Here are some of the very ‘semangat’ fans who were there that I snapped! (Scroll to the bottom of this post for video)

It was a concert of an hour and a half. Set list included almost all the songs off their debut album of ‘Torches’, as well as a cover of Weezer’s “Say It Ain’t So”.

Picture of the band shortly before they left the stage. Pic from Sony Music Malaysia's Facebook.

The crowd was pretty well behaved generally, but lead singer Mark Foster did stop the concert for a while to tell the audience to not push the people in front and to give them some space, saying that ”it’s all fun and games till somebody dies”. Yes, he really said that. The guy has stage presence – in between and during songs, he would spread his arms like a Christ figure, climbing on the speakers at the end, banging on the cymbals with his own drumstick (yes, even though he’s not the drummer).

You’re probably wondering – are they good live? Yes – drumming is top notch, keyboards were on, guitar solos sounded perfect, and Mark Foster’s distinctive semi-falsetto voice was spot on. Good bass from the sound system, though it was a bit hard to hear some of the subtler synth notes.

On a side note, I am very sure two people particularly enjoyed themselves. One of them was someone I couldn’t spot, but I could smell, who was smoking weed. Not that I know the smell of weed, someone else pointed that out to me  And there was the aunty next to me with her kids, who was texting her husband that she was at some ‘young people foster band’. She was dancing along happily to the music though. Crowd was a mix of hipsters (not that many though, dissapointingly, I was hoping to get some dress up ideas), parents with their children, international school kids and a few people that looked like they would be more at home at the Ella/Awie concert that was happening across town.

Here’s “Don’t Stop” (I always thought that this would have made a stronger second single than Helena Beat though):

Their cover of Weezer’s “Say It Ain’t So”

Here’s a video I shot of the epic ending they had with ‘Pumped Up Kicks’. They had a very nice intro, and later in the song, even incorporated the dance/dubstep remix of ‘Pumped Up Kicks’

(Skip to 4:22 for the song, the intro is rather long but I felt it worked very well at the venue. Also, sorry about my finger.)

All in all this was a very good concert – definitely one of the best I’ve been to ever (the other would be We Are Scientists gig in Zouk many years back). This is one of the rare occasions where I didn’t wait for free tickets, as I really wanted to catch them – I did actually purchase my tickets at RM188 each (bought them in December last year). It was great to be able to sing along to all their songs – while I do go for lots of concerts, there are few bands that I listen to really constantly (like, every month) like Foster The People.

However I feel really bad for those that did not buy the VIP tickets – the hall was too narrow and there wasn’t enough stage elevation to be able to see the band, instead they would have to settle for just a relatively small video screen. While the sound system was really good, and I like the fact that it was air conditioned, there really should have been a better choice of venue.

UPDATE! I found out the name of the song that was played solo by Mark Foster on piano/keyboard only – It’s called Ruby, and you can view it here below:

Trivia: The band was originally called “Foster And The People”, but fans kept mispronouncing it so they adopted the name “Foster The People”, also because it was the meaning of ‘taking care of the people’.