It is generally not a good idea to have too late a night on a school night.

Sometimes it can be fun to see if this idea still holds. It does.

Monday night we travelled for ages (if it takes longer than 10 minutes to get somewhere in HK, it is considered a long way) in the opposite direction from our home to see Placebo. They were due to begin at 8pm.

Surprisingly, they had a support act. No concert we’ve seen here has had a support act. As what appeared to be a Canto-rock band set up on stage, we hoped they’d play no more than five songs. Me because this would mean a 9pm start for Placebo and not too late a night for us, Mr Shallot because he thought they were less than ordinary. He was right but it was my first Canto-rock concert so I didn’t mind so much.

This venue served alcohol inside but you could only drink in the sectioned off area at the back. We went there for a beer and waited for the support act to finish. They played five songs.

The roadies then retuned the guitars they’d probably tuned two hours prior. The lights then dimmed and the predominantly HK local crowd started chanting “Pla-say-bo, Pla-say-bo, Pla-say-bo”. It was unusual to hear the name said like this and it took a couple of chants before we realised what was being said.

The band then came on stage to huge cheers. Unlike The Cure concert, this one hardly had any people with video cameras. People were mainly taking photos on their i-Phones and then getting into it. This was only the second time Placebo had toured HK. Apparently the first time, the lead singer passed out on stage. This time, there was less drama though it was the first time they’d played a particular song live. I don’t have their new album yet so I can’t remember which it was.

After one encore, the ugly lights came on and it was time to go. Same as The Cure, they didn’t play the one song that I was really hoping for – Pure Morning.

We stepped outside to be greeted by lightly falling rain, a queue a mile long for the taxis and some green mini-buses going to Causeway Bay. While this was not the way we were planning on going home, at least it would get us on the MTR line.

Around midnight we arrived home and went to bed. It was Mr Shallot’s turn to take the dog out in the morning. Lucky for me.

The week was downhill from that point, between being very busy at work and having too little sleep, I’d been counting down the days until the weekend and a sleep-in.
* Thanks to Placebo for the title to this post.