Year: 2006

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 🙂