(no subject)
Whew! This is a weekend I've been looking forward to for a LONG time, and I was not disappointed!
First and foremost, my bestest friend sistercoyote came home from the next state over, and we spent the whole weekend together. THAT was wonderful in and of itself.
She flew in to San Diego early in the AM, where my sister (who lives there) picked her up while I was struggling down through traffic to get to sis' house. We met up at last, snuggled the dogs, handed my kids over to sis (who took them to the SD Zoo and exhausted them but good while we were goofing around!). Sistercoyote and I drove up to the last existing Farrell's Ice Cream Parlor north of SD and had a ver nice lunch of burgers and hot fudge sundaes, then headed into downtown San Diego and (like good fangirls with the afternoon before a concert to kill), tried to find the place where band members were performing a few songs and doing a meet and greet with radio station winners. We were laughing at ourselves, and I'm still not sure what we were expecting -- maybe to get a handshake or an autograph as they left the building, or something. Still it was silly and fun, even though we apparently went to the wrong place.
(It was apparently a memorable show -- a professional musician fan who couldn't bring her camera brought her flute instead -- and when the boys started playing Save A Prayer, she played the keyboard warble on her flute, bewildering the band, the audience members, AND the radio station staff. They brought her up on stage to play the whole song with them though, and nearly made her cry.....
from MY 94.1 website (click for more photos)
PS -- John apparently has a new tattoo on his left arm, underneath his "G" (for Gela) -- which says "Discipline of Love")
Anyway, we had no expectations on the meet'n'greet, so no great loss, we went ahead and went up to the neighborhood of the SD Sports Arena and went shopping for a while to kill time -- talking and talking the whole time. (My sister didn't quite understand why we didn't have specific "stuff to do" for the day; believe me, when you haven't spent significant time with your best friend in over a year, it's wonderful just to do ANYTHING together, even sitting in a parking lot yakking, which we did end up doing for a while!)
Anyway, we finally parked at the arena and sat in the car listening to sound check, then went in. Our seats turned out to be quite good -- third row in the loge, right on the aisle. As I said to Sistercoyote, the stage was easily in distance of a good paper-airplane throw....
SO...the show. The show was awesome. Surprisingly intimate for the venue -- they'd sold about a quarter of the arena, with the rest curtained off behind the stage, so it was probably actually smaller than the show we saw at Universal Amphitheatre a couple of years ago. Simon's voice is stronger than it's ever been, the vocal coaching is definitely helping. (It also helps that they're not doing SoCal at the END of the tour like they usually do -- I imagine he'll be a bit ragged by the time they're done anyway...) They played five songs off the new album (Astronaut, Chains, Nice, What Happens Tomorrow, and Sunrise), three die-hard fan-fave album cuts (Hold Back The Rain, Chauffeur, Careless Memories), and the rest was all hits -- Hungry, Ordinary World, Is There Something I Should Know, Notorious, on and on.... No View To A Kill or Reflex, though....
The band was playing very tight, and the chemistry was good, although the band did not interact too much at the beginning of the concert. Many of the details blur with the LA show the next night....but here's my pictures. (I brought my digicam to SD but not LA.)
You can see more of the stage set-up here -- two wings off to the side to come out in the audience.
Andy coming to visit our side of the stage
John and Simon singing together -- that's a big white skull on the back of John's ugly red plaid jacket
Simon wearing his chauffeur hat, and playing the ocarina, during the haunting song The Chauffeur
A better pic of the hat, courtesy of lioness176
Roger standing up to play electronic drums during the instrumental Tiger Tiger (while Simon rested his vocal cords backstage!), again courtesy of lioness176
Simon and John alternating the chorus of Wild Boys
did I mention John was wearing leather pants....?
...and got down on his knees during White Lines?
Simon also had a dirty dancing moment with John, where he came up right behind John at center stage and John wiggled ass in front of him....very funny....
Andy being introduced on the big screen
and John mugging for the big screen too
the amazing mobile lighting rig
saying goodnight (snif)
One funny about the end of the show -- they came over onto the left wing of the stage, as you see in the pic there, and then Simon went bounding over to the right wing, with Nick, Andy and Roger right behind, but John was just ambling across the stage, the total rock star with the "I'll be there when I get there" attitude. Too funny.
Ah well....I'll write more later about my Saturday with sistercoyote, and the LA show, and I may end up editing this one as more details occur to me. What a fanTAStic weekend!
First and foremost, my bestest friend sistercoyote came home from the next state over, and we spent the whole weekend together. THAT was wonderful in and of itself.
She flew in to San Diego early in the AM, where my sister (who lives there) picked her up while I was struggling down through traffic to get to sis' house. We met up at last, snuggled the dogs, handed my kids over to sis (who took them to the SD Zoo and exhausted them but good while we were goofing around!). Sistercoyote and I drove up to the last existing Farrell's Ice Cream Parlor north of SD and had a ver nice lunch of burgers and hot fudge sundaes, then headed into downtown San Diego and (like good fangirls with the afternoon before a concert to kill), tried to find the place where band members were performing a few songs and doing a meet and greet with radio station winners. We were laughing at ourselves, and I'm still not sure what we were expecting -- maybe to get a handshake or an autograph as they left the building, or something. Still it was silly and fun, even though we apparently went to the wrong place.
(It was apparently a memorable show -- a professional musician fan who couldn't bring her camera brought her flute instead -- and when the boys started playing Save A Prayer, she played the keyboard warble on her flute, bewildering the band, the audience members, AND the radio station staff. They brought her up on stage to play the whole song with them though, and nearly made her cry.....
from MY 94.1 website (click for more photos)
PS -- John apparently has a new tattoo on his left arm, underneath his "G" (for Gela) -- which says "Discipline of Love")
Anyway, we had no expectations on the meet'n'greet, so no great loss, we went ahead and went up to the neighborhood of the SD Sports Arena and went shopping for a while to kill time -- talking and talking the whole time. (My sister didn't quite understand why we didn't have specific "stuff to do" for the day; believe me, when you haven't spent significant time with your best friend in over a year, it's wonderful just to do ANYTHING together, even sitting in a parking lot yakking, which we did end up doing for a while!)
Anyway, we finally parked at the arena and sat in the car listening to sound check, then went in. Our seats turned out to be quite good -- third row in the loge, right on the aisle. As I said to Sistercoyote, the stage was easily in distance of a good paper-airplane throw....
SO...the show. The show was awesome. Surprisingly intimate for the venue -- they'd sold about a quarter of the arena, with the rest curtained off behind the stage, so it was probably actually smaller than the show we saw at Universal Amphitheatre a couple of years ago. Simon's voice is stronger than it's ever been, the vocal coaching is definitely helping. (It also helps that they're not doing SoCal at the END of the tour like they usually do -- I imagine he'll be a bit ragged by the time they're done anyway...) They played five songs off the new album (Astronaut, Chains, Nice, What Happens Tomorrow, and Sunrise), three die-hard fan-fave album cuts (Hold Back The Rain, Chauffeur, Careless Memories), and the rest was all hits -- Hungry, Ordinary World, Is There Something I Should Know, Notorious, on and on.... No View To A Kill or Reflex, though....
The band was playing very tight, and the chemistry was good, although the band did not interact too much at the beginning of the concert. Many of the details blur with the LA show the next night....but here's my pictures. (I brought my digicam to SD but not LA.)
You can see more of the stage set-up here -- two wings off to the side to come out in the audience.
Andy coming to visit our side of the stage
John and Simon singing together -- that's a big white skull on the back of John's ugly red plaid jacket
Simon wearing his chauffeur hat, and playing the ocarina, during the haunting song The Chauffeur
A better pic of the hat, courtesy of lioness176
Roger standing up to play electronic drums during the instrumental Tiger Tiger (while Simon rested his vocal cords backstage!), again courtesy of lioness176
Simon and John alternating the chorus of Wild Boys
did I mention John was wearing leather pants....?
...and got down on his knees during White Lines?
Simon also had a dirty dancing moment with John, where he came up right behind John at center stage and John wiggled ass in front of him....very funny....
Andy being introduced on the big screen
and John mugging for the big screen too
the amazing mobile lighting rig
saying goodnight (snif)
One funny about the end of the show -- they came over onto the left wing of the stage, as you see in the pic there, and then Simon went bounding over to the right wing, with Nick, Andy and Roger right behind, but John was just ambling across the stage, the total rock star with the "I'll be there when I get there" attitude. Too funny.
Ah well....I'll write more later about my Saturday with sistercoyote, and the LA show, and I may end up editing this one as more details occur to me. What a fanTAStic weekend!