Category: Music

Tuesday night Andrea, her Matthew and I had a fantastic night at the U2 concert, watching them kick off the Asia-Pacific leg of the Vertigo tour at long last (they were meant to play in March but had to cancel due to illness). The concert was well worth the wait and the rains managed to stay away for the night which was nice. I was very close to selling my ticket because I had two exams the following day, one at 8:30am but about 5 seconds into the intro of City of Blinding Lights I was glad I had decided to go and proceeded to have a smile on my face for the rest of the night. Well apart from that part where there was a lady on the big screen who read the UDHR and I started weeping.

The concert itself was truly great, everything else though sort of sucked. The delays in the shuttle buses that were running to and from the venue, the lack of signage at the venue telling people where to go, the fact that security stopped checking bags pretty quickly as there was no way they could check everyone, the lack of enough food and merchandise stalls to process people quick enough. Lots of things really sucked and I am sure looking back on the concert the organisers are wishing they had been able to get the permits to hold it at Lang Park instead of at QE2, which has the logistics in place from all the Rugby games to deal with 45 000+ people.

We didn’t get to see Kanye West who was the support act but then I don’t think many people did and I am pretty certain most people didn’t really care about missing him because yeah enough said.

Set list
1) City of Blinding Lights
2) Vertigo
3) Elevation/The Go-Betweens – Streets of Your Town (a little tribute to Grant McLennan)
4) Until the End of the World
5) New Year’s Day
6) Beautiful Day
7) Yahweh
8) Walk On
9) Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own/The Black Hills of Dakota
10) Love and Peace or Else
11) Sunday Bloody Sunday
Father Abraham/Political Interlude
12) Bullet the Blue Sky/ When Johnny Comes Marching Home/Hands that Built America
13) Passengers – Miss Sarajevo
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
14) Pride (In the Name of Love)
15) Where the Streets have No Name
Political Interlude
16) One

Encore #1
Political Interlude
17) Zoo Station
18) The Fly
19) With or Without You/The Go-Betweens – Streets of Your Town (a little tribute to Grant McLennan)

Encore #2
20) The Saints are Coming (World Premiere of the song!)
21) Angel of Harlem/Young Americans (as Young Australians)
22) Kite

I said to Andrea and Matthew that this has to be the biggest concert Brisbane has had in a long time and it seems that I was correct, it was in fact the biggest since two concerts in 1998, one by Elton John & Billy Joel and of course the other by U2.

I have had a rather musical weekend. On Friday night Mum and I went to the Powerhouse to take in a show as part of the Brisbane Cabaret Festival and on Saturday night I went to see Bernard Fanning at the Convention Centre.

Barbara Fordham is a voice that I guess that most people outside of Brisbane will never experience which is a real pity as this lady can sing. I would personally put her up there with Eva Cassidy on vocal talent and they both do really good versions of Fever.

For one of our pieces of assessment for year 12 English we went to see a rock musical called Still Standing and the singer in the band just blew me away with her voice. That was June or July, by Christmas I had seen her perform a further three times in a genre that she could own, the jazz standards as well as some other little pieces thrown in for fun. Then I guess I sort of lost track of when she was playing gigs. The other week I saw an ad for the Brisbane Cabaret Festival and spotted her name on the poster.

Off Mum and I trotted to the Powerhouse for a delightful night of music, conversation and fun. Barbara was the second act of the night, the first act was Jacob Diefenbach, a young lad who could certainly play the piano and had a couple of good songs. Then there was Barbara and her band playing a delightful set with plenty of laughs, commentary and ripping vocals. If you are ever in Brisbane and see the name Barbara Fordham on a poster or in a gig guide you should make every effort to go along.

Saturday night, I went along to the Bernard Fanning show, with support from Sime Nugent and Augie March. Ahhh what a night! Sime Nugent was pretty cool, just a man and his guitar singing about life. Augie March are a band that I have heard of for years and probably heard a few songs on the radio but never really “listened” to them before. They were pretty rocking too so will have to have a good check out of some of their songs. Then it was Mr Bernard Fanning, the poster boy of the Brisvegas music scene. He took over the world with the boys from Powderfinger and again with his solo album Tea and Symphony. He rocked. It was a really good night and he was well worth seeing live as he sounded even better live than on the CD.

Next up is U2 next Tuesday night 🙂

There has been many times this year and in the past when I have put money, uni and other things before going to concerts and in the end ultimately regret it.

Michael Franti and Ben Folds both played in Brisbane last month, both two shows that I had ummed and aahed over about because of the price but also two artists that I enjoy dearly. When I decided I wanted to go it was too late and they were sold out. Earlier this year I regret not going to have seen Beth Orton, Martha Wainwright, Tristan Prettyman, The Posies, Misfits, Bouncing Souls, Sigur Ros, Xavier Rudd, Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals, Gerling, Split Enz, Claire Bowditch, Jason Mraz, Bic Runga and Dianna Ross (but her show has been cancelled so I haven’t really missed out) and so many others.

In two weeks time Chris Isaak is playing at a local vineyard with Alex Lloyd and Ross Wilson, I ummed and ahhed and now it is sold out 🙁 Now somebody’s (really) crying 😉

My mantra now is that I will go with my gut feeling when I first hear about the concert, price will not be the determining factor; the factor will be what sort of rotation do I have them on in winamp or have I heard good things about their shows.

I don’t want to look back at my life in five, ten years time and regret not going to those concerts as I continue to enjoy their music especially when I hold such special memories of concerts from the Mountain Goats, The Whitlams and others.

The other day I saw an ad in the paper saying that tickets for Madeleine Peyroux go on sale this coming Friday (well that was yesterday) and this morning when I was cycling to work I saw a billboard advertising the concert so one of the first things I did when I came home was to buy my ticket 🙂 I am five rows from the stage and pretty much smack in the middle 🙂 I stumbled across Madeleine from something I had read about Yann Tiersen (the artist who did the Amélie soundtrack) and was just enchanted by her voice, listening to the magic it weaves in the air, just magical stuff, I can’t wait!