We took an end-of-the-weekend sojourn and headed over to Orlando last Sunday, March 14, to see French electro-pop duo Air play at Hard Rock Live. A group of us had reserved a few rooms at Universal Orlando’s Loews Portofino Bay Resort for an overnight stay thanks to our good friend and fellow concertgoer who worked at Universal, so we all benefited from his employee discount on the steeply-priced rooms, and took a water taxi from the man-made bay in back of the resort hotel via water way direct to the pool at CityWalk in front of Hard Rock, the most convenient trip to a venue I’ve ever had the pleasure of enjoying. [All photos by Phil Bardi.]
Inside, the blocky AIR logo was projected onto a giant screen at the rear of the stage. The duo – dark-haired Jean-Benoît Dunckel and gingery Nicolas Godin – were joined by drummer Joey Waronker, a three-piece set-up that seemed dwarfed by the stage’s generous size, and the screen towering up behind them enforced this sense of smallness.
This article appears in Mar 17-23, 2010.