Franz Ferdinand – Live at Liverpool – 2003 – BBC 6 Music – Gordon Skene Sound Collection –
Franz Ferdinand this week. From a concert performed in Liverpool in 2003, the same year they released their debut ep, which was originally intended to be self-released, but which got picked up by the Indie label Domino Records and quickly got the interest started.
Almost from the get-go, they were considered the band to watch. Formed in 2002, By November of 2003 they got nominated for an NME Award and it would be the start of a long string of successful albums and Music Industry Awards for this Scottish Indie congolomerate.
In January 2004 the single “Take Me Out” reached No. 3 in the UK charts. The album, Franz Ferdinand, was released in early 2004, debuting at No. 3 in the UK Albums Chart in February 2004, and at No. 12 in the Australian album charts in April 2004. The album only reached the lowest levels of the Billboard 200 album charts in the US as of early 2004, but reached the top 5 of the indie rock chart and the Heatseeker chart for debut artists. After a couple of North American tours and heavy rotation of the “Take Me Out” video on MTV, the album eventually reached No. 32 on the Billboard 200 later in 2004, and sold over a million copies in the United States.Franz Ferdinand received a generally strong positive response from critics. NME rated it 9 out of 10, and said that the band was the latest in the line of art school rock bands featuring The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Roxy Music, the Sex Pistols, Wire, Travis, and Blur.
On 7 September 2004 the album was awarded the 2004 Mercury Music Prize. “Take Me Out” gained first place in the Australian Triple J Hottest 100 for 2004, winning more than twice the votes of the second-place entry, with This Fire and The Dark of the Matinee entering at No. 24 and No. 50 respectively. Franz Ferdinand won an Ivor Novello Award in 2004 and two BRIT Awards in 2005. The avant-garde music video for “Take Me Out” earned them a Breakthrough Video MTV Award. NME named Franz Ferdinand the best album of 2004, and placed it 38th on their 100 Best Albums of All Time list.The band performed “Take Me Out” as a live medley with Los Lonely Boys, Maroon 5, The Black Eyed Peas, and Gwen Stefani at the 47th Annual Grammy Awards in 2005, in which “Take Me Out” was nominated for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal and Franz Ferdinand was nominated for Best Alternative Album. “Take Me Out” was featured on the video games NHL 2005, Madden NFL 2005 and the breakthrough game Guitar Hero. The album has sold around 3.6 million copies worldwide.
Some sixteen years after first getting together, they are still at it, with no signs of letting up. And their fifth studio album, Always Ascending is slated for release in February of this year.
In all that time they have maintained an Indie/Post-Punk approach to their sound. But in recent years they’ve shifted away from that to a more Dance-Oriented style, and had a successful collaboration with the L.A. band Sparks with whom they toured several festivals in 2014 and 2015 as FFS and Sparks.
This concert is early Franz Ferdinand. It’s suggested you crank it up.
