You may recall I was very excited about my front row tickets at this show (and that I anxously kept checking my receipt to make sure I wasn't mistaken!). The good news: I really did have front row seats! The bad news: this was by far the worst concert I have ever attended in terms of crowd behaviour. But I'll try to be positive.
I loved Chrissie Hynde. I'm a reasonable fan of the Pretenders anyway, but the band was super tight and Chrissie's voice was outstanding. Hymn to Her gave me chills. She said it was for Stevie who she "discovered today really is an angel". I feel like there was a story here, but despite it being mentioned again during Stevie's set, we never did hear what it was... I can also fully support Chrissie's anti-camera/phone stance. It really is becoming a terrible annoyance at concerts, and it was nice to see people just focused on the music and dancing and enjoying themselves (cf: Stevie's set; see below). I think Chrissie genuinely just wanted people to have a good time, and she seemed to be loving the crowd response.
Stevie, Stevie, Stevie. My experience of her performance was marred on several occasions by ratty people around me, but I know she was stellar. With the exception of If Anyone Falls, which I honestly think she should stop performing live because it ends up sounding too shouty for my ears, I think it's the best I've heard her sound in five outings. Memorable moments:
- She said very early on that she will never break Fleetwood Mac up. I snickered.
- I loved the story about the Bella Donna shawl. My word, it is beautiful too.
- At one point (of several), Stevie was talking about her memories, but accidentally said "memori" (rhymes with "cacti"). She absolutely cracked herself up, saying that was her "double memory", and that should definitely be the plural (or "plurali"
) of memory.
- If You Were My Love is not my favourite song off 24K Gold, but she sang it beautifully and the visualisations behind her on stage were very dramatic, and captivating.
- Actually, all the visualisations were great, and I loved how they supplemented her story telling in parts.
- Has Stevie been saying all tour long that she inspired Prince's ruched pants? That seemed a stretch, even to me
- I loved hearing Outside The Rain for the first time live.
- It's possible that my mother and I missed it because of "crowd issues" (trying to be positive), but we are both 99% certain Stevie did not sing Crying in the Night last night. I think the above reviewer has referred to the setlist, which is simply a copy of the earlier setlists. No particular reason that I can give for why it was missed.
- The stripped back version of Moonlight was wonderful. Being in Brisbane: The Birthplace of Moonlight, she did tell the story about how she came to write it, although compared to the 2011 story, she focused more on how she'd dragged Karen? and someone else (a man; not Waddy, surely; there was definitely something going around me at this time which meant I didn't get the whole story) off to see the movie (twice) in Melbourne. She did basically thank us though for single handledly getting her back into recording music. We'll take it. We can't lay claim to much else
Writing this has actually made me feel substantially better about the crowd, but a quick note -- it shouldn't be surprising that having a concert at a winery, from 3pm in the afternoon, and letting people buy wine by the bottle leads to some profoundly drunk people. Also, it was not a typical Stevie or Fleetwood Mac crowd -- lots of less than casual fans (who are now complaining on Facebook about all the talking Stevie did, and about how she didn't sing enough FM songs; these were probably the same people who repeatedly yelled out things such as "shut up and sing" during the concert). Unfortunately, being at the "end" of the front row, we had a lot of people (who had paid substantially less for their ticket) trying to push in front of us, largely to take selfies and photos, not even to rock out to the songs. My mother copped some terrible verbal abuse and harassment, all for standing up for herself. I have another concert on Wednesday night (Live, a genuine 90s rock band), and I think it will be an interesting test. I go to a lot of concerts, and I really, really just want people to be more considerate of others.