tonight we went to an amazing david byrne concert. the show was fantastic – the music and the visuals were stunning, david’s voice was even better then his early days with the talking heads, the venue was great and our seats were dead centre less than 10 metres from the stage.
the show was at the michael fowler centre – the small venue next to town hall and the home of the nz symphony. a great space for a concert.
as we were waiting for the show to start we noticed this was not your typical concert crowd. almost no one between the ages of 20 and 30. mostly folks who were in uni during the 80s. and some of them brought along their kids. but there was one real standout. mid show much of the crowd left their seats to go right up to the edge of the stage. these seats were quickly filled as folks from the back moved up into the now empty seats. all of the audience is now up on their feet really enjoying the show and i notice the guy now in front of me. he is standing motionless, with homeless guy hair and a baseball cap with an image of the madonna draped in the us and italian flags. i kept waiting for him to ask “hey man…when does the zz top show start?”
we almost didn’t go to the show – and a techno-house band would have been to blame. way back in the early 90’s my friend heavy d (aka david) bought tickets to see “the klf” perform. “the klf” is actually two pale british lads who create the music on computers in their basement. so how were they going to do a live performance of music that was made without any musicians? the answer was bringing out a boom box on the stage and hitting the play button. no live musicians. no actual members of “the klf”. as you might expect the crowd was more than a bit peeved. with that in mind the jboss dismissed the posters all around town that pitched “songs of david byrne and brian eno”. the night before the show i was able to convince her that the actual live breathing david byrne was coming and we started looking for tickets. nothing but impaired view seats available from the theatre, but at the last minute we were able to grab our most fantastic seats from a seller on trademe (the nz copy of ebay).
the band were all in white and many of the songs featured 3 dancers in workout clothes & ipods. it sounds hokey, but having seen it i now couldn’t imaging the show without them.
as we were leaving the show we both commented on how much it seemed like david and the rest of the band & dancers were having a blast. when my work colleagues and i gather round the water cooler each night before heading home our smiles are not quite as wide…
