Random thoughts that went through my mind during the Bloc Party concert at the Congress Theatre on Friday, March 23:

• The refrain from "Helicopters," "Are you hoping for a miracle?" summed up how I felt about the material from A Weekend in the City. I was way off in hoping that the songs would translate better live than they did on disc.
• Matt Tong's nimble but powerful drumming stood out in ways that it doesn't in recordings.
• After Tong shed a jacket of some variety and then his shirt, was the next step going to be waxing his chest hair on stage?
  
• Are concert venues making less money on drinks now that everyone fills the time between sets texting their friends?
• Does the new Chicago smoking ban not apply to concert venues such as the Congress Theatre, or is just too futile to enforce?
• Is it strictly as a memento that people bother taking cell phone pictures at big concerts? Between the distances and the resolution, they're only getting blurry photos of lights on a stage.
• With the ubiquity and miniaturization of electronic devices, do venues no longer ban cameras and recording devices?
• I used to be concerned that I wasn't listening to any new music. Lately, lots of the new music I've been seeking out sounds like old music. And yet the only two people at the concert who were conspicuously older than I were the sound engineer and a dad hovering at the back, likely chaperoning his teenager at a distance.
  
• Since A Weekend in the City hasn't brought a monumental leap in fame over Silent Alarm, I can't be accused of the cliché of thinking they were cool when they were obscure and shunning them just because they're popular. I merely prefer the first album to the second.
  
• Would all of these thoughts have been going through my mind if the new songs were better?