Before they reached number one on the Billboard charts and were the featured band on Saturday Night Live, the boys of Vampire Weekend found themselves in a van driving from New York City to play a show at a small, little-known establishment called Terrace Club.
Josh Hirshfeld '08, Terrace's social chair at the time, described the show's conception as something of a happy accident.
"[The band] had a friend who was a former member of the club," Hirshfeld said. "He had been talking up Terrace as a great place to play, and they actually reached out to me first about playing here. I had been hearing about them on the blogs at the same time, and it seemed like they were just about to reach that next level - I wanted to get them here to Terrace before that."
Hirshfeld initially tried to book Vampire Weekend for the club's spring Dean's Date show, but it didn't work out because one of the band's members was graduating from college on that same day. Even though the band began working with a professional agent soon after its first contact with Hirshfeld, the Afro-pop sensations agreed to play at Terrace the next fall.
Though Vampire Weekend had not yet achieved anything close to the popularity that it currently enjoys, the news that it would be playing at Princeton generated a wave of excitement across the campus.
"A lot of people started to take notice of [the band] over the summer [before the show], but even the students who hadn't heard of them knew it was something that they should check out," Hirshfeld said.
The reaction was similar to the one surrounding last fall's performance by Wu-Tang Clan member GZA: even those who knew very little about hip-hop chose to attend, knowing that the event would be exciting and memorable.
When on Sept. 14 - the night of the show - finally arrived, the band did not disappoint.
"It was a fun time," Hirshfeld said. "There was lots of dancing, and we had a fully packed house."
And contrary to what many of the band's reviewers have to say, Hirshfeld found the band members friendly and sociable - a far cry from the detached, elitist musicians they are often described as.
"They were nice guys," he said. "They even spent a while playing the Wurlitzer and theremin up in my bedroom before the show."
This is the first article in a series on the best concerts in Princeton history. Next week: MGMT!
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