I'd offer to help carry his bombs for him.
Hello! I shall try and be more succinct than I was last entry. First up, have my
OMG COUNTING CROWS
THEY WERE AMAZING.
K firstly I will tell you how the rest of the day was. I have class on Fridays so to avoid showing up at the concert in jeans and a t-shirt saying "ALOHA" on it, I packed a handbag and makeup and jewelery and wore a shirt over my dress and tights that I was going to wear to the show. After class, which finished at 1, I hopped the free city circle tram to Melbourne Central to avoid buying a two hour ticket and bummed around there until 3. Then it was back to uni where I threw my stuff in my locker, swapped my monkey shirt for my denim jacket, did my makeup, threw everything but my handbag in my locker and went back to Melbourne Central. At 4.30 I met Mum, who'd come from home, and my friend Laura who'd come from her uni and we hopped the 16 tram to St Kilda. We got out when we saw the beach and walked down to Beachcombers, which is this great restaurant down on the beach about ten minutes walk from the Palais. For the fact fans, I had the beachcomber beef burger, Laur had the salmon and avocado pizza, and my mum had the calamari rings, all of which were delicious. Afterward we had coffee and Laur and I shared a mini mud cake.
After that we walked over to the Palais, and I will bring up by this point that the sea air was kind of freezing. They had a bigass CC poster advertising the tour out the front and their name on the sign, and there was already a bunch of people waiting around outside (this was at about 7.15, with doors set to open at 7.30). Laur and Mum and I stood around for a while listening to Counting Crows music from my phone. The doors opened early at around 7.25ish, so we said goodbye to Laur and joined the line. We had Ticketfast tickets, which are Ticketmaster's instant ticket/self-printing ticket system, thus our tickets were A4 sheets of paper which I was concerned about. The Palais is not the most modern of threaters. But we got in fine save my Mum's water bottle being confiscated by security for it's waterbottleness. We went upstairs and sat around for a little while, but we were really interested in where our seats were so we just went in. I practically died when we got shown our seats. Once the usher figured out we were in lounge A as opposed to lounge AA, we realized our seats were not only lounge front row as we knew, but the upstairs equivalent of being around 15th row back on the floor. Now, see, we've been to many a show where we have barely been able to see the stage. We have been to shows where we have to rely on video screens in order to see anything at all, and we've been to Bon Jovi which is in its own category because we were absolute nosebleed at that, so it was wonderful to have seats where I could see who was who. (For the record, CC is the type of show where you miss out if you're too far back, but more on that later). The seats really were like sitting on a lounge suite too. It was like having your own little armchair.
Anyhoo, so, about ten minutes after we sat down the guy seated next to me, now forever dubbed Recording Guy, comes in and proceeds to set up a whole heap of recording equipment. Counting Crows are very pro-bootlegging and have been since they started as a band - anyone at a CC show is allowed to record them and distribute the recording so long as they don't charge for anything, or only charge for material costs like blank CDs or postage. So it was interesting to be next to someone who was actually doing that. A couple more people came in to our section but for the most part, everyone seemed to be staying at the bar outside. I will say now that I found it strange that this show sold out. Counting Crows don't have enough of a following to support their own individual tour here (they are here supporting The Who, as you know) and this sideshow was a "by fan demand" thing, yet it seemed like many of the people who were there...weren't fans. But again, more on that later.
So, we were in and seated by about 7.35ish. At maybe 7.45ish a person popped on stage holding a pretty decent DSLR camera and took a couple of photos of the still-empty stalls. It took me a second to realize who it was but because I'm lame I went out loud "OH MY GOD IS THAT ADAM?" (Adam Duritz, lead singer) and Recording Guy next to me very plainly went "Yep". There wasn't a single scream or yell or anything at all when he came out, he just came out, took a few photos, said something to the guys in the center of the front row stalls, and went backstage again. That's what I loved about this show - despite CC being big enough to get a Palais show in the first show, it was so jovial, so relaxed. There are a lot of people who accuse Counting Crows/their fans/me of being "pretentious", and I really wish they could go to a CC show and see how it really is. There is absolutely no pretense whatsoever and none of the guys have tickets on themselves, to the point where I think they knew that only a certain percentage of the show was going to be die-hard CC fans. But they're not there and they weren't there to play for the people who weren't. And while I hate the selfish notion that a band has 'sold out" if they hit the big time or gain a following, sometimes I am so glad that Counting Crows are not huge, because otherwise I wouldn't have had this experience. The fact that the lead singer of a band can come on stage, take a few photos and talk - the fact that in the US he on occasion goes out into the audience to sign things - is just nice and I'd hate for that to be taken away.
Anyway, the actual show. At 8.15 it was support band time, which was The Verses. I will admit when news came out about them supporting I mixed them up with The Wreckers and was all "Michelle Branch wut?" but no, they are actually the remnants of Killing Heidi, which had some hits back in 2002, I think? I was young, I remember that much. It might have been the 90s. Anyway, they were actually pretty good for what must have been a last minute gig. They're like country-folk rock, not very quiet, but still good. They did a good five or six songs before heading off. Apparently in the gap between them and CC, Adam was at the side of the stage taking more photos now that the theater was more full. My mum was actually kind of shocked at the amount of instruments in CC's setup, which was probably deserving because there was indeed a lot, including a fiddle, a banjo, a trumpet, a full size cello and two pianos. The drum kit also had like 17 drums or something.
After some bathroom craziness on my part (that line would NOT go down!) the "Lean On me" intro, which CC have been using for at least a year now, came on and did I mention there is nothing better than the scream of the crowd just before/when the band comes out? It's just awesome. The band came out and segued straight into "Cowboys", which is amazing as an intro song. It was then I realized how much the people further back, both in the stalls and in the dress circle behind us, were missing out. What really makes a CC show is Adam's gestures and movements. As someone on the CC board said, CC aren't a jukebox - you can't put money in and have a straight performance played back at you. Adam likes to get into the words of the songs and play with them, twist them around, add alternates and extra verses and act out every line. It's a bit like he's constantly revising what he writes. You get the idea that every song is precious to the band and means something as opposed to being something recorded on an album and dredged up for a show, and you can't escape the fact that these aren't just songs but words that came from a person about their experiences. I fear I am getting into the pretentious fan stage I mentioned earlier haha, but that's what it me at the show. I love that they are so honest and shake things up all the time.
Anyway, the actual set list. After getting so into "Cowboys", they eased into "Children In Bloom" (one of two songs they played that I wasn't familiar with) and I believe went right into radio hit "Mrs Potter's Lullaby", which was our epic song for the evening. CC are very much an album band - in fact, most of their attempted single releases have been the label's idea, and bombed - and as such have many a song that go over 5, 6 or even 10 minutes. "Mrs Potter" goes for over 7!
(Disclaimer: these vids come not from me, but from someone in the second or third row I saw filiming, heh. Kudos!).
Anyway after that Adam spoke for a sec, including the usual "we're sorry it took us so long to get back here" (which is an apology we didn't really need considering the last tour here got canceled due to his grandmother dying, which he couldn't exactly help) and a "this is a messed up set we're playing tonight...never opened with Cowboys and Children before". And it was kind of a crazy set. It was Hard Candy/Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings centric, which I expected considering their last half-tour was for Hard Candy and this one is the first major international since SN&SM was released. But we got to hear some absolutely AMAZING fan favourite songs, including the next one we heard, "Miami". He told us the song story - waiting at the airport to meet his girlfriend in the middle of a long tour and realizing that they weren't going to last forever, or even for very much longer - before going into it, and it had an extra verse thrown in that was beautiful: if you knew everything, if you could see everything before it happened, what would you do...if you knew that the love that you threw away would mean everything to her...break her heart in two, what would you do? (They didn't censor "too dumb to fuck" either, haha). And from that it was into "Black and Blue", which is insanely emotional live - it almost feels like you're intruding on his thoughts because it's such a personal song, and one I forgot I really loved. Before I start nattering on about the crowd I will post the actual set list, which was:
Cowboys
Children In Bloom
Mrs Potter's Lullaby
Miami (with extra verse)
Black and Blue
Hanging Tree
Time And Time Again
Mr Jones
When I Dream Of Michelangelo
Anna Begins
Richard Manuel Is Dead
Sundays
Good Time
Round Here
Colorblind
A Long December
Come Around
Encore -
Washington Square
Hard Candy
Anyway, by about "Hanging Tree", which was the next song, the crowd reception was getting kind of evident. I was embarrassingly into this show with my singing along and clapping and seat-dancing, and, er, no one else was. Our entire row was just people sitting there like they were at the movies. That's the thing, I think, with concerts here - we have more than our fair share of bands who tour, but even so no way near as many as other countries, and as such people see concerts as something to do as opposed to something to savor. The Palais, especially, has a bar and is close to a bunch of restaurants and stuff, so obviously there were people there who just saw it as a night out (and were old enough to remember CC's "Mr Jones" heyday, which was 1993); I just didn't expect there to be so many. And don't stare at me weirdly when I get into the show because I actually LIKE THE BAND. I know, shock, right, I'm at a show for a band I actually like and am dancing. Whatever will you do. Even Recording Guy didn't do anything, though that may have been because he was recording. Someone on the CC board called it a "typically Australian [crowd]" and while I don't know if it's necessarily an Australian thing, it is a trend and I hate it. Apparently people in the stalls were getting annoyed when people stood up during the louder songs, and I remember looking over the balcony to see only about 4 or 5 people on their feet. It was just sad.
But back to the positive: considering the crowd, "Mr Jones" was obviously a hit. So much so that some people across the aisle got up and started dancing and subsequently got yelled at by security because the first 4 lounge rows were strictly no standing lol. It was so much fun though, and the only song most of the crowd sang along to. (And it was on So You think You Can Dance last week! SHA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA, YEAH!) And then, "Anna Begins":
There was a lot of fuss for "Anna Begins", and you could totally pick the fans in the crowd from the people dying over hearing it live. There's a great story behind this song - if I'm remembering correctly, it was written about the first girl Adam fell in love with, when he was a teenager on family holiday in Greece. The real Anna was Australian and they obviously had to part ways after the holiday, and apparently she is now a lawyer in Sydney and married with a family, and whenever he tours here he visits her. So I figured "Anna Begins" would come up in one of the Australian shows somewhere. It's just breath-taking live and so many details become clear live as opposed to recorded, like in the line every time she sneezes I believe it's love - he shrugs a little before sneezes, like it's a random word he just plucked out the air as opposed to something he'd agonized over. It's just perfect.
For the sake of those of you that are just reading this to humor me because you are my friends, I will not go on much longer. Thus I will speak in certain terms: my favourite song of the night was "Round Here".
It's a big long beautiful story of a song, and there was an extra...I wouldn't say verse, but segment in the middle - she asked me, did you think that you were dreaming? I said no, I didn't think that I was dreaming, so I said so...I just want this to come true, and all I need is you...I don't think that I'm dreaming but sometimes I don't know. It might have been an alternate I've never heard, come to think of it. All night Adam had been going back and forth across the stage and hopping up onto the fixtures at the front (I don't think they were amps; I think it's just fixtures as part of the Palais stage) and for that, as you can see in the above, he went and sat on one of them right at the edge of the stage. It was so heartfelt and quiet; it was beautiful. When someone in the back of our section started clapping it took about two seconds for the whole theater to catch on, and when the piano matched up to our beat it was so perfect. It does absolutely nothing to solve the mystery of Maria either, which I won't go into as it's a bit of a CC fan thing. If anything, it adds another element - it's him almost taunting us with the idea that maybe Maria as he has or has not explained it, that the story in the song, could be partially fake. It's like you have to look at the song with him as an unreliable narrator now, that he might have been dreaming - and as CC fans will know, Adam has struggled with disassociation issues in the past where his life felt like a hallucination. Hell, at the end of the song it turns into did you think that you were dreaming? i said no, but I was dreaming; I just didn't know...I just wanted it to come true and baby, all I had was you. It throws the whole thing into a new perspective.
Other awesome parts of the show:
- During most of the guitar solos, Adam would sing the bit leading up to it, do a bit of a "Take it Charlie/Dan" or whatever, and then wander off either to sit on the piano and drink his beer, or grab his towel and flip through the set list. The beer drinking was the best part because he was half drinking it from the bottle, and half drinking it from a glass, like he was being half-civilized LOL. During one of the talking bits in between songs, he was holding the towel at length and flicking it to wrap and unwrap it around his hand like he was nervous. It's really nice to see a lead singer be all fidgety like that!
- "Michelangelo" is one of those songs that's a bit uninteresting on record, but is really great live. The harmonica solo is awesome.
- All the Hard Candy songs TOTALLY GAVE ME FLASHBACKS. That album came out in 2003 when I was 12/13 and it was my jam for that whole year. The previous year I'd been depressed/cutting/in pain and that was the first really good year I'd had in a while, and Hard Candy completely summed it up, from "Black and Blue" to "Good Time" to "Up All Night" and "Hard Candy". So I pretty much died when the last song of the show was "Hard Candy". I feel like I should have much dorkier music as my teenage flashback music, but what can you do.
- I'd been saying in the lead-up to this that I hoped Counting Crows wouldn't try and play a shoe of their "hit singles" as so many bands do here, considering CC don't actually have any hit singles save "Mr Jones", "Accidentally In Love" and "Big Yellow Taxi" (none of which were actually chart hits, but I digress). And they didn't, though "Colorblind", which probably fits the hit criteria, felt a tad out of place.
- Adam got his own piano for "A Long December" and it was pretty glorious.
- I forgot "Good Time" had a banjo in it. The intro story of Adam being matched with some big-time actress by a tabloid and thinking she would be just as shy as him was really awesome too:
- All you guys probably want to know is a) did I meet the band and b) DID MY EYES CONNECT WITH THE LEAD SINGER ACROSS A CROWDED ROOOOOM (I'm sure Ness is asking that) to which I will say a) no, the show ended at 10.45 and save checking the merch stand and getting some water, we went straight home as our ride was there by 11 and b) that Adam is 46. I could however have sworn he looked at me maybe one or twice, when the light effects illuminated our section. Possibly because I was the only one dancing like an idiot, to which I'm sure his reaction would have been "Who the fuck is that and why is she having a seizure?" had he noticed at all.
- This show better be on LiveCountingCrows.com eventually or I will go and do something bad, like eat a lot of all the cake. YOU AIN'T HAVIN' THE CAKE.
- It makes me sad that the closest I ever get to Jovi doing a show like this is when they play an arena in Charlotte, NC. WOE IS ME, EH.
In other news, I still have a bit of a cold, and I withdrew from a class I didn't like this week (by my choice, not the school's). Thankfully I've pulled out of it early enough so that I don't get an academic penalty for it and I'm not financially liable, either. Thing was, the class was not only boring but there was a big group assignment coming up, and it's the kind of assignement wherein everyone has to critique my ideas and opinions and look for holes in my arguments, and I just did not want to do that. That may seem pathetic or counter-intuitive or whatever, but I am done with going by what other people think I should do, you know? It's going to have ltitle to no effect on me graduating my course when it comes time to do that, so I feel decently about doing it.
So anyway, because I am not trying to be a downer, lots of things to pimp!
- outofdoritos, this made me think of you because people are incorrectly passing it off as a "sitcom" map: map showing the settings of a bunch of TV shows. With a separate map for New York! I love how in all the decades covered by those maps there's still a good 7 or 8 states which are apparently so boring they're not worthy of TV depictions, heh. Someone on TV Tonite brought up the possibility of an Australian one, but it would be kind of moot considering most of our shows are set in Sydney or Melbourne. (Sea Patrol is probably the only exception).
- Obama did a public Q&A session which is a really interesting read, if only to hear him butt in to say that he thinks legalizing marijuana is not a good strategy to "grow" the economy. Yes, he actually says grow LOL.
- Those of you on Last.Fm: Last.FM is taking away free radio for non-subscribers, unless, of course, you live in the Big 3 (in this case, America, the UK or Germany). So basically we're barred unless we subscribe for 3 Euros a month. I hate when stuff like this happens. Obviously Last.FM thinks the subscription cost is a small price to pay, but it's a lot when you factor in the exchange rate (effectively doubling the cost for us) and, you know, every other site on the net asking for our money. Sigh. (ETA: Update. Change is postponed but they're still doing it eventually).
- There's a good day or so left on Sweet Charity's last ever fandom auction. I've bid on some things for my mom so wish me luck!
Also, I would just like to make a point I didn't during my Watchmen recap: inc ase you missed it, the premise of this movie requires that Jeffrey Dean Morgan die in the first five minutes. It's like a mystery now. The mystery of WHY DO THEY KEEP KILLING JDM? And returning him in flashbacks?! He's like "Hi, I'm JDM, Hollywood's Resident Walking Corpse". And a hot one at that.
OMG COUNTING CROWS
THEY WERE AMAZING.
K firstly I will tell you how the rest of the day was. I have class on Fridays so to avoid showing up at the concert in jeans and a t-shirt saying "ALOHA" on it, I packed a handbag and makeup and jewelery and wore a shirt over my dress and tights that I was going to wear to the show. After class, which finished at 1, I hopped the free city circle tram to Melbourne Central to avoid buying a two hour ticket and bummed around there until 3. Then it was back to uni where I threw my stuff in my locker, swapped my monkey shirt for my denim jacket, did my makeup, threw everything but my handbag in my locker and went back to Melbourne Central. At 4.30 I met Mum, who'd come from home, and my friend Laura who'd come from her uni and we hopped the 16 tram to St Kilda. We got out when we saw the beach and walked down to Beachcombers, which is this great restaurant down on the beach about ten minutes walk from the Palais. For the fact fans, I had the beachcomber beef burger, Laur had the salmon and avocado pizza, and my mum had the calamari rings, all of which were delicious. Afterward we had coffee and Laur and I shared a mini mud cake.
After that we walked over to the Palais, and I will bring up by this point that the sea air was kind of freezing. They had a bigass CC poster advertising the tour out the front and their name on the sign, and there was already a bunch of people waiting around outside (this was at about 7.15, with doors set to open at 7.30). Laur and Mum and I stood around for a while listening to Counting Crows music from my phone. The doors opened early at around 7.25ish, so we said goodbye to Laur and joined the line. We had Ticketfast tickets, which are Ticketmaster's instant ticket/self-printing ticket system, thus our tickets were A4 sheets of paper which I was concerned about. The Palais is not the most modern of threaters. But we got in fine save my Mum's water bottle being confiscated by security for it's waterbottleness. We went upstairs and sat around for a little while, but we were really interested in where our seats were so we just went in. I practically died when we got shown our seats. Once the usher figured out we were in lounge A as opposed to lounge AA, we realized our seats were not only lounge front row as we knew, but the upstairs equivalent of being around 15th row back on the floor. Now, see, we've been to many a show where we have barely been able to see the stage. We have been to shows where we have to rely on video screens in order to see anything at all, and we've been to Bon Jovi which is in its own category because we were absolute nosebleed at that, so it was wonderful to have seats where I could see who was who. (For the record, CC is the type of show where you miss out if you're too far back, but more on that later). The seats really were like sitting on a lounge suite too. It was like having your own little armchair.
Anyhoo, so, about ten minutes after we sat down the guy seated next to me, now forever dubbed Recording Guy, comes in and proceeds to set up a whole heap of recording equipment. Counting Crows are very pro-bootlegging and have been since they started as a band - anyone at a CC show is allowed to record them and distribute the recording so long as they don't charge for anything, or only charge for material costs like blank CDs or postage. So it was interesting to be next to someone who was actually doing that. A couple more people came in to our section but for the most part, everyone seemed to be staying at the bar outside. I will say now that I found it strange that this show sold out. Counting Crows don't have enough of a following to support their own individual tour here (they are here supporting The Who, as you know) and this sideshow was a "by fan demand" thing, yet it seemed like many of the people who were there...weren't fans. But again, more on that later.
So, we were in and seated by about 7.35ish. At maybe 7.45ish a person popped on stage holding a pretty decent DSLR camera and took a couple of photos of the still-empty stalls. It took me a second to realize who it was but because I'm lame I went out loud "OH MY GOD IS THAT ADAM?" (Adam Duritz, lead singer) and Recording Guy next to me very plainly went "Yep". There wasn't a single scream or yell or anything at all when he came out, he just came out, took a few photos, said something to the guys in the center of the front row stalls, and went backstage again. That's what I loved about this show - despite CC being big enough to get a Palais show in the first show, it was so jovial, so relaxed. There are a lot of people who accuse Counting Crows/their fans/me of being "pretentious", and I really wish they could go to a CC show and see how it really is. There is absolutely no pretense whatsoever and none of the guys have tickets on themselves, to the point where I think they knew that only a certain percentage of the show was going to be die-hard CC fans. But they're not there and they weren't there to play for the people who weren't. And while I hate the selfish notion that a band has 'sold out" if they hit the big time or gain a following, sometimes I am so glad that Counting Crows are not huge, because otherwise I wouldn't have had this experience. The fact that the lead singer of a band can come on stage, take a few photos and talk - the fact that in the US he on occasion goes out into the audience to sign things - is just nice and I'd hate for that to be taken away.
Anyway, the actual show. At 8.15 it was support band time, which was The Verses. I will admit when news came out about them supporting I mixed them up with The Wreckers and was all "Michelle Branch wut?" but no, they are actually the remnants of Killing Heidi, which had some hits back in 2002, I think? I was young, I remember that much. It might have been the 90s. Anyway, they were actually pretty good for what must have been a last minute gig. They're like country-folk rock, not very quiet, but still good. They did a good five or six songs before heading off. Apparently in the gap between them and CC, Adam was at the side of the stage taking more photos now that the theater was more full. My mum was actually kind of shocked at the amount of instruments in CC's setup, which was probably deserving because there was indeed a lot, including a fiddle, a banjo, a trumpet, a full size cello and two pianos. The drum kit also had like 17 drums or something.
After some bathroom craziness on my part (that line would NOT go down!) the "Lean On me" intro, which CC have been using for at least a year now, came on and did I mention there is nothing better than the scream of the crowd just before/when the band comes out? It's just awesome. The band came out and segued straight into "Cowboys", which is amazing as an intro song. It was then I realized how much the people further back, both in the stalls and in the dress circle behind us, were missing out. What really makes a CC show is Adam's gestures and movements. As someone on the CC board said, CC aren't a jukebox - you can't put money in and have a straight performance played back at you. Adam likes to get into the words of the songs and play with them, twist them around, add alternates and extra verses and act out every line. It's a bit like he's constantly revising what he writes. You get the idea that every song is precious to the band and means something as opposed to being something recorded on an album and dredged up for a show, and you can't escape the fact that these aren't just songs but words that came from a person about their experiences. I fear I am getting into the pretentious fan stage I mentioned earlier haha, but that's what it me at the show. I love that they are so honest and shake things up all the time.
Anyway, the actual set list. After getting so into "Cowboys", they eased into "Children In Bloom" (one of two songs they played that I wasn't familiar with) and I believe went right into radio hit "Mrs Potter's Lullaby", which was our epic song for the evening. CC are very much an album band - in fact, most of their attempted single releases have been the label's idea, and bombed - and as such have many a song that go over 5, 6 or even 10 minutes. "Mrs Potter" goes for over 7!
(Disclaimer: these vids come not from me, but from someone in the second or third row I saw filiming, heh. Kudos!).
Click to viewAnyway after that Adam spoke for a sec, including the usual "we're sorry it took us so long to get back here" (which is an apology we didn't really need considering the last tour here got canceled due to his grandmother dying, which he couldn't exactly help) and a "this is a messed up set we're playing tonight...never opened with Cowboys and Children before". And it was kind of a crazy set. It was Hard Candy/Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings centric, which I expected considering their last half-tour was for Hard Candy and this one is the first major international since SN&SM was released. But we got to hear some absolutely AMAZING fan favourite songs, including the next one we heard, "Miami". He told us the song story - waiting at the airport to meet his girlfriend in the middle of a long tour and realizing that they weren't going to last forever, or even for very much longer - before going into it, and it had an extra verse thrown in that was beautiful: if you knew everything, if you could see everything before it happened, what would you do...if you knew that the love that you threw away would mean everything to her...break her heart in two, what would you do? (They didn't censor "too dumb to fuck" either, haha). And from that it was into "Black and Blue", which is insanely emotional live - it almost feels like you're intruding on his thoughts because it's such a personal song, and one I forgot I really loved. Before I start nattering on about the crowd I will post the actual set list, which was:
Cowboys
Children In Bloom
Mrs Potter's Lullaby
Miami (with extra verse)
Black and Blue
Hanging Tree
Time And Time Again
Mr Jones
When I Dream Of Michelangelo
Anna Begins
Richard Manuel Is Dead
Sundays
Good Time
Round Here
Colorblind
A Long December
Come Around
Encore -
Washington Square
Hard Candy
Anyway, by about "Hanging Tree", which was the next song, the crowd reception was getting kind of evident. I was embarrassingly into this show with my singing along and clapping and seat-dancing, and, er, no one else was. Our entire row was just people sitting there like they were at the movies. That's the thing, I think, with concerts here - we have more than our fair share of bands who tour, but even so no way near as many as other countries, and as such people see concerts as something to do as opposed to something to savor. The Palais, especially, has a bar and is close to a bunch of restaurants and stuff, so obviously there were people there who just saw it as a night out (and were old enough to remember CC's "Mr Jones" heyday, which was 1993); I just didn't expect there to be so many. And don't stare at me weirdly when I get into the show because I actually LIKE THE BAND. I know, shock, right, I'm at a show for a band I actually like and am dancing. Whatever will you do. Even Recording Guy didn't do anything, though that may have been because he was recording. Someone on the CC board called it a "typically Australian [crowd]" and while I don't know if it's necessarily an Australian thing, it is a trend and I hate it. Apparently people in the stalls were getting annoyed when people stood up during the louder songs, and I remember looking over the balcony to see only about 4 or 5 people on their feet. It was just sad.
But back to the positive: considering the crowd, "Mr Jones" was obviously a hit. So much so that some people across the aisle got up and started dancing and subsequently got yelled at by security because the first 4 lounge rows were strictly no standing lol. It was so much fun though, and the only song most of the crowd sang along to. (And it was on So You think You Can Dance last week! SHA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA, YEAH!) And then, "Anna Begins":
There was a lot of fuss for "Anna Begins", and you could totally pick the fans in the crowd from the people dying over hearing it live. There's a great story behind this song - if I'm remembering correctly, it was written about the first girl Adam fell in love with, when he was a teenager on family holiday in Greece. The real Anna was Australian and they obviously had to part ways after the holiday, and apparently she is now a lawyer in Sydney and married with a family, and whenever he tours here he visits her. So I figured "Anna Begins" would come up in one of the Australian shows somewhere. It's just breath-taking live and so many details become clear live as opposed to recorded, like in the line every time she sneezes I believe it's love - he shrugs a little before sneezes, like it's a random word he just plucked out the air as opposed to something he'd agonized over. It's just perfect.
For the sake of those of you that are just reading this to humor me because you are my friends, I will not go on much longer. Thus I will speak in certain terms: my favourite song of the night was "Round Here".
It's a big long beautiful story of a song, and there was an extra...I wouldn't say verse, but segment in the middle - she asked me, did you think that you were dreaming? I said no, I didn't think that I was dreaming, so I said so...I just want this to come true, and all I need is you...I don't think that I'm dreaming but sometimes I don't know. It might have been an alternate I've never heard, come to think of it. All night Adam had been going back and forth across the stage and hopping up onto the fixtures at the front (I don't think they were amps; I think it's just fixtures as part of the Palais stage) and for that, as you can see in the above, he went and sat on one of them right at the edge of the stage. It was so heartfelt and quiet; it was beautiful. When someone in the back of our section started clapping it took about two seconds for the whole theater to catch on, and when the piano matched up to our beat it was so perfect. It does absolutely nothing to solve the mystery of Maria either, which I won't go into as it's a bit of a CC fan thing. If anything, it adds another element - it's him almost taunting us with the idea that maybe Maria as he has or has not explained it, that the story in the song, could be partially fake. It's like you have to look at the song with him as an unreliable narrator now, that he might have been dreaming - and as CC fans will know, Adam has struggled with disassociation issues in the past where his life felt like a hallucination. Hell, at the end of the song it turns into did you think that you were dreaming? i said no, but I was dreaming; I just didn't know...I just wanted it to come true and baby, all I had was you. It throws the whole thing into a new perspective.
Other awesome parts of the show:
- During most of the guitar solos, Adam would sing the bit leading up to it, do a bit of a "Take it Charlie/Dan" or whatever, and then wander off either to sit on the piano and drink his beer, or grab his towel and flip through the set list. The beer drinking was the best part because he was half drinking it from the bottle, and half drinking it from a glass, like he was being half-civilized LOL. During one of the talking bits in between songs, he was holding the towel at length and flicking it to wrap and unwrap it around his hand like he was nervous. It's really nice to see a lead singer be all fidgety like that!
- "Michelangelo" is one of those songs that's a bit uninteresting on record, but is really great live. The harmonica solo is awesome.
- All the Hard Candy songs TOTALLY GAVE ME FLASHBACKS. That album came out in 2003 when I was 12/13 and it was my jam for that whole year. The previous year I'd been depressed/cutting/in pain and that was the first really good year I'd had in a while, and Hard Candy completely summed it up, from "Black and Blue" to "Good Time" to "Up All Night" and "Hard Candy". So I pretty much died when the last song of the show was "Hard Candy". I feel like I should have much dorkier music as my teenage flashback music, but what can you do.
- I'd been saying in the lead-up to this that I hoped Counting Crows wouldn't try and play a shoe of their "hit singles" as so many bands do here, considering CC don't actually have any hit singles save "Mr Jones", "Accidentally In Love" and "Big Yellow Taxi" (none of which were actually chart hits, but I digress). And they didn't, though "Colorblind", which probably fits the hit criteria, felt a tad out of place.
- Adam got his own piano for "A Long December" and it was pretty glorious.
- I forgot "Good Time" had a banjo in it. The intro story of Adam being matched with some big-time actress by a tabloid and thinking she would be just as shy as him was really awesome too:
- All you guys probably want to know is a) did I meet the band and b) DID MY EYES CONNECT WITH THE LEAD SINGER ACROSS A CROWDED ROOOOOM (I'm sure Ness is asking that) to which I will say a) no, the show ended at 10.45 and save checking the merch stand and getting some water, we went straight home as our ride was there by 11 and b) that Adam is 46. I could however have sworn he looked at me maybe one or twice, when the light effects illuminated our section. Possibly because I was the only one dancing like an idiot, to which I'm sure his reaction would have been "Who the fuck is that and why is she having a seizure?" had he noticed at all.
- This show better be on LiveCountingCrows.com eventually or I will go and do something bad, like eat a lot of all the cake. YOU AIN'T HAVIN' THE CAKE.
- It makes me sad that the closest I ever get to Jovi doing a show like this is when they play an arena in Charlotte, NC. WOE IS ME, EH.
In other news, I still have a bit of a cold, and I withdrew from a class I didn't like this week (by my choice, not the school's). Thankfully I've pulled out of it early enough so that I don't get an academic penalty for it and I'm not financially liable, either. Thing was, the class was not only boring but there was a big group assignment coming up, and it's the kind of assignement wherein everyone has to critique my ideas and opinions and look for holes in my arguments, and I just did not want to do that. That may seem pathetic or counter-intuitive or whatever, but I am done with going by what other people think I should do, you know? It's going to have ltitle to no effect on me graduating my course when it comes time to do that, so I feel decently about doing it.
So anyway, because I am not trying to be a downer, lots of things to pimp!
- outofdoritos, this made me think of you because people are incorrectly passing it off as a "sitcom" map: map showing the settings of a bunch of TV shows. With a separate map for New York! I love how in all the decades covered by those maps there's still a good 7 or 8 states which are apparently so boring they're not worthy of TV depictions, heh. Someone on TV Tonite brought up the possibility of an Australian one, but it would be kind of moot considering most of our shows are set in Sydney or Melbourne. (Sea Patrol is probably the only exception).
- Obama did a public Q&A session which is a really interesting read, if only to hear him butt in to say that he thinks legalizing marijuana is not a good strategy to "grow" the economy. Yes, he actually says grow LOL.
- Those of you on Last.Fm: Last.FM is taking away free radio for non-subscribers, unless, of course, you live in the Big 3 (in this case, America, the UK or Germany). So basically we're barred unless we subscribe for 3 Euros a month. I hate when stuff like this happens. Obviously Last.FM thinks the subscription cost is a small price to pay, but it's a lot when you factor in the exchange rate (effectively doubling the cost for us) and, you know, every other site on the net asking for our money. Sigh. (ETA: Update. Change is postponed but they're still doing it eventually).
- There's a good day or so left on Sweet Charity's last ever fandom auction. I've bid on some things for my mom so wish me luck!
Also, I would just like to make a point I didn't during my Watchmen recap: inc ase you missed it, the premise of this movie requires that Jeffrey Dean Morgan die in the first five minutes. It's like a mystery now. The mystery of WHY DO THEY KEEP KILLING JDM? And returning him in flashbacks?! He's like "Hi, I'm JDM, Hollywood's Resident Walking Corpse". And a hot one at that.