Stuff for a Wednesday

I haven't really chatted on here for a while, so I thought I'd check in. The kids have gone back to school, with my little baby moving into grade 1, and my older baby into grade 4. "I'm not in primary anymore, Mummy, I'm a junior now!" So what have I been up to...

Breaking Bad
IlovethisshowsomuchIdon'tevenknowwheretobegin. I can't believe we only have four episodes left of this magnificent series. If you've been hearing all the hype and rolling your eyes and thinking, "Oh GOD it's like when the frickin' Wire was on," believe it. It's really as good as everyone says it is. Bryan Cranston is sublime, Aaron Paul turns in one jaw-dropping performance after another, and this season, Dean Norris as Hank has been incredible. At the end of the first episode back, there was a scene that will easily be the scene I remember most from this year (the same year I saw the Red Wedding, I might add), and it was FANTASTIC. In the next episode, I screamed when they ended it (DAMN YOU, CLIFFHANGERS!!!) And in the third episode, I was ready to storm creator Vince Gilligan's house and demand he show me the fourth episode right now!!! It's that good. So please check it out, and if you're watching, I hope you're loving it as much as I am.

The Vampire Diaries
I mentioned in a recent post that I had finished season 3 of The Vampire Diaries and was crazy hooked.  I had been thinking ahead and had recorded all of season 4 onto my PVR since last September, so I finally sat down and watched it, finishing up just a few days ago. And while it probably didn't make me screech with delight quite as much as season 3 did, it was freakin' addictive. Why? It's still The Originals for me. Klaus is just magnificent, and whenever Elijah shows up I sigh the sigh of the obsessed. Rebekah is fantastic, but Klaus has my heart. (And I want him to have Caroline's, too.) Caroline still remains my favourite Mystic Falls person, mostly because she's just so damn earnest!! No matter what is happening or who just died or what apocalypse was just averted, Caroline stomps one fashionable foot and screams that the prom/formal/semi-formal/other lavish school event/graduation was almost ruined and GODDAMMIT she's not going to stand for it!! And I heart her so much for it. This fall I might be looking forward to the new CW series, The Originals, even more than season 5 of The Vampire Diaries. Because if they're the highlight of the show for me now, and they've been transplanted elsewhere, I'm keen to see who they keep on as viewers. That said, Damon and Stefan and their eternal struggle to get the girl to love him and not his brother is crazy fun to watch, and Damon usually has some quip that makes me laugh out loud. Elena I still don't care much for, but there are enough other characters that I'm happy happy happy. So for the first time, I'll be watching the season premiere of TVD alongside everyone else. Yay!

Other Shows on my PVR
I've mentioned this before, but I don't just have one PVR that holds 200 hours of programming; I have two of them. I'm simultaneously recording up to four shows at one time, and I figure I'll watch some of them now (anything on cable, basically) and some of them later (network comedies and the handful of dramas I actually watch that aren't on HBO or AMC). But the problem is, I was a little too recording-happy last year, and now I still have the following shows there staring at me:
*Revolution (which I have every intention of watching, because I really enjoyed the first three episodes, but then I erased those and I've been trying to get into the fourth episode recently and I don't quite remember where I am in the show!)
*The Mindy Project (love every episode I've watched but I've only watched about 10 of them)
*Modern Family (with so much else on the go, this took a back seat. The entire season is sitting there)
*The Neighbours (watched the first episode and LOVED it, and I don't know a SOUL who watches it. So the entire season of this one actually got the dump earlier this week)
*Elementary (watched the first episode and thought it was great, but decided to go back and watch Sherlock first, and then never caught up on Elementary)
*Under the Dome (really liked the first episode, but haven't watched beyond that. I guess I liked it, but didn't love it, and with so much else on the go it takes a lot to get me to watch something)
*The Following (watched the first episode and thought it was corny and utterly unbelievable — really? A bunch of internet psychopath wannabes were able to organize themselves and fool the FBI?? — and when I started watching Hannibal, it felt superior in every way, so I've never watched the rest of it. But, again, it's all right there if I want it)
*Arrow (watched the first episode and loved it, and never had the time to watch the rest. Oh, well, and the fact my husband went and erased the first 10 episodes just as I was about to marathon them didn't help)
Instead, I've gotten a lot more reading done this year than in the past. So maybe I need to curb my TV viewing? Or figure out a better schedule for it? See, I'm currently working through Sons of Anarchy on DVD, and have bought The Good Wife and really want to watch Parenthood and have put on hold at the library all of Castle and Luther, so there are a ton of other good shows that have proven themselves that I'd like to watch. Maybe I just have to accept that I can't watch everything.

BUT... Fall shows!!!
But yeah, the fall shows are starting. And on my list to watch are (* denotes new):
Boardwalk Empire
*Sleepy Hollow
*Blacklist
*Marvel's Agents of SHIELD (Duh)
Revolution
Nashville
Big Bang Theory
*The Millers
*The Crazy Ones
*The Michael J. Fox Show
Once Upon a Time
Homeland
*Super Fun Night
The Vampire Diaries
*The Originals
*Once Upon a Time in Wonderland
The Walking Dead
*Dracula
*Almost Human

So, um... OK, I don't know how I'm going to do this. But I will try!!

The Hunt
Speaking of Mads Mikkelsen (wait, I wasn't? Well, I should be!) I went to see his latest film, The Hunt, last week, and it was mindblowingly good. It's in Danish, as are most of his films, and in this one he plays a kindergarten teacher who has a friendly disagreement with a five-year-old girl, who goes to the head of the kindergarten and says that he showed her his "willie." And... who's going to question a five-year-old girl, right? The movie shows exactly what happens to a man in a small town when an innocent little girl says something foolish, and everyone believes her. It was heartbreaking, and his performance is tremendous.

The World's End
And from frightful to frightfully hilarious, I saw the third instalment of the Cornetto trilogy this past weekend and thought it was fab. If a little depressing at times. See, basically this guy remembers a night of wild drinking in 1990, when he was 17 (the exact age I was in 1990), as the best night of his life, so he decides to re-enact it with his buddies, but now, they're old. Old. They're about 40. My age. And therefore, old. Oh, fuck off, stupid "40 is old" bullshit.

But whatever.

Aside from that, the soundtrack was fantastic, it had some hilarious lines, and I loved loved loved seeing so many of them back again. When they walk into the eighth or ninth pub and Brian from Spaced was standing there, I literally squealed out loud. SO HAPPY. I really enjoyed this movie; Simon Pegg is just... so... funny.

Sigur Ros
I know I talk about my love of Sigur Ros a lot, but if you want to know what they're like live, they played a show in London UK on Monday, and it was live-streamed around the globe as part of the iTunes festival. Follow this link and when you click on it, it'll open the show in your iTunes and you can watch the entire thing. This tour was the best time I'd ever seen them, so it's worth it if you have the time. :)

David Bowie: The Next Day

When I was 16 years old, I went to a record show* and ran into a guy who worked at the same grocery store as me. (*Hey, kids: long, long ago, in 1990, we didn't have download sites or, well, the internet, so we went to these old-fangled things called record shows where you could find bootlegs of concerts, memorabilia, and anything you wanted on your favourite musical acts. It was like ComicCon for music nerds.) We began talking, surprised to see each other there, and he discovered I was there hunting for obscure U2 bootlegs from the early '80s, while I found out he was looking for shows by The Smiths and David Bowie.

David Bowie? To me, he was that guy in the blue suit and yellow hair who'd done "Let's Dance" and "Modern Love." But this guy introduced me to the wonder that is Bowie, and I realized Bowie is unlike anyone else in music. He's a chameleon, always changing yet never playing by the rules, on the cusp of what's cool while always sticking around the edges of it himself. I fell in love... with Bowie, and this guy. So, I listened to everything Bowie did, and married the guy from the record show.

For that reason and many others, Bowie is very important to me. I saw him four times on the Reality tour when I was pregnant with my first child. Days after the first concert, I discovered I was pregnant. I felt her move during "Heroes" at the second show. She rocked out during "Heroes" at the third show. And on the fourth, a day I'll never forget, I drove to Buffalo racked with worry because I hadn't felt her move all day. I suffered through the car ride, dinner, and the first part of the show... and then Bowie broke into "Heroes"— and she walloped me with one hard kick. It was one of the most amazing moments of my life. As we drove home from the hospital with a day-old baby in the car, we listened to "Heroes" on the stereo, and we felt like a king and queen.

In January, almost exactly 23 years to the day when we started dating, we were vacationing in Orlando when my husband appeared in the bedroom doorway one morning, breathless, exclaiming that "Oh my god Bowie has a new single and a new album I cannot believe this" and I leapt out of bed, and we listened to him together. It was as if Lennon had risen from the dead and played for us.

Today is the day the album comes out, and we've already been listening to it for a week since it started streaming on iTunes. With a simple, almost mocking cover that looks like it was created in iPaint — with "Heroes" album cover being whitewashed over by a white box and the title of the album crossed out — you know from the outset this is Bowie returning to his roots, yet dashing them at the same time. Once again, The Thin White Duke has reinvented himself.

And today, I welcome my husband to the blog to offer a guest review of Bowie's new album. Please welcome Robert Thompson!

Author’s note: For much of the past decade I’ve written about sports, business, and yes, music. For what it is worth — and I won’t say all that much since I caught the magazine on its decline — I was also a contributing editor to the music magazine Billboard. Which just means, like a lot of people, I’m a Bowie fan, with a sterling promo vinyl copy of his first album on display in my music room, amid the bootlegs and books that celebrate his unparalleled career. That makes me a fan boy — I recognize that. I’m also Nikki Stafford’s husband and she has kindly granted me some space to write about his new album, which hits stores today, but has been streaming on iTunes for a week.

I, like many, thought Bowie was gone.  I saw him four times on the Reality tour around the time my daughter was born. After his heart attack, I assumed he would solider on. But when he didn’t — or when I read author Marc Spitz write that he assumed Bowie had retired to look after his daughter — I found some degree of relief. Unlike the ever greying Who and Stones, Bowie would go out in fine form. Reality was a solid outing — no it wasn’t Scary Monsters, but no one expected it to be. And the live shows were staggeringly good. It was a fine encore to a career that was derailed for a decade starting at Tonight. His reputation wouldn’t be tarnished in the way it might have been had he ended on say, Tin Machine.

With that in mind, I must admit I felt like an excited teen when, while on holiday with my wife and kids in St. Petersburg, of all places, I checked my computer one morning in early January to find Bowie had released a new song. A one-off surely? After all, he’d been gone so long. It was a mixture of trepidation and fascination that I immediately bought the song, “Where Are We Now?” on iTunes. What I received was a thoughtful ballad with a powerful ending, the sort of song that sneaks up on you, sticking in your head. Part “Wild Is the Wind,” the piano-driven track would have stood out on either of Bowie’s last two albums. It wasn’t a single — what is a single in the era following the passing of MTV and commercial radio? — but it was a plaintive ballad full of allusions to the period of Bowie’s Berlin recovery following the cocaine-addled Stationtostation tour.

“Where Are We Now?” with its “as long as there’s sun,” crescendo of drums on the outro was a hopeful start. It was enough for me to wishfully think that this would be the one. Lacking any commercial consideration, any expectation of any sort, maybe this would be the album where Bowie would have a complete creative rebound. It could be his surprising masterpiece no one saw coming.

Not surprisingly, The Next Day isn’t that. No one could really expect Bowie, now 66, to reach the extended peak he found 1970s’ The Man Who Sold the World and Scary Monsters. By my count he carded a dozen records in that decade, all remarkably good. In turn he set an impossible standard against which he can’t really succeed. There’s an argument to be made that no artist in the history of rock music has had such a sustained run of consistently great albums.

Considering that, it is fascinating to find the new album is solid, even spectacular in places. And though there’s nothing retro about the sound, there are plenty of allusions to the glory days when Bowie could do no wrong and really was without peer. From the top, “The Next Day,” with its angular slashing guitar and aggressive, reverb-heavy vocal, would fit nicely on “Heroes.” The same could be said for “How Does the Grass Grow,” with its vocal line that wouldn’t be out of place on the second side of Scary Monsters or the slightly off-kilter harmonies of the glammy stomp “(You will) Set the World on Fire,” which could find a spot early on Lodger. Yep, at least for some of the tracks on The Next Day, Bowie reaches an artistic level that many wouldn’t have considered possible for a man many dismissed as artistically irrelevant for the past 30 years. 

If there’s a criticism, it might be that the music on the album is too straightforward, with producer Tony Visconti taking a hands-off approach to experimentalism. In that context there’s been a lot made in early discussion of “You Feel So Lonely You Could Die,” one of two delicate and fascinating songs that end the album, and rightfully so. On “You Feel So Lonely…” Bowie effortlessly scales heights unseen since the brilliance of Ziggy. He’s tried this before — remember “I Know It’s Gonna Happen Someday” off the largely horrible Black Tie White Noise? For some reason that attempt didn’t resonate the way the new track does — and for those that might miss the subtle link to Bowie’s glam period, he exits the song with the intro to Ziggy’s “Five Years.”

Which leaves us with “Heat,” the song the pundits suggest is the Second Coming of Scott Walker. Bowie has mined this territory before — see almost all of the underrated Outside — and yes, its vocal apes some of Walker’s eccentric tendencies. But there’s nothing as elaborately weird on “Heat” that can be compared to the whimsical strangeness that abounds on Walker’s Bish Bosch. In other words, there’s no percussionist smacking a side of beef. Instead we’re given slight discordant strings and a brave vocal performance that emulates the most accessible elements of Walker’s unusual approach.

The brilliance in The Next Day is that Bowie seems to be once again writing songs with little consideration to fashion or stylistic currency. There’s no jungle here, like Earthling, or newfound folksiness, like Hours. But at the same time many of the new songs have the same flair, the same spark that made that earlier material — now more than three decades old — seem fresh when released and timeless now.

The problem with being a legend is you’re always judged by what made you legendary. Bowie’s standard at his creative height was so high as to be all but unreachable. His later material, much of which is very good, is always overshadowed by the brilliance of his seventies songs. He can’t be expected to remake Scary Monsters in the same way the Stones can’t remake Exile on Main St. I’ve read some of the gushing reviews for The Next Day and wonder if it is a case similar to John Lennon’s return on Double Fantasy. Critics want it to be great, and are hoping against hope that when a legend returns they’ll not do damage to their status. In those cases many pundits tend to go overboard — lauding an album in a way it doesn’t warrant.

I don’t think that’s the case here. What’s makes The Next Day so compelling is that there are instances where Bowie shows he can muster up the nerve and the artistic arrogance to do what he does best. That’s enough — and more than I expected.

Tom Waits Inducted into the R&R Hall of Fame

I'm SO in Love!!!

Robert Smith + 1980s keyboards + Platinum Blonde + Crystal Castles = INSTANT ADORATION ♥♥♥

Roger Waters: The Wall Live

Last weekend my husband and I were chatting and he mentioned something about Roger Waters doing a live version of The Wall. I said, "That sounds amazing, could you imagine?" and he looked at me with some surprise and said, "Why, do you want to go? I have 4 tickets and haven't figured out who the fourth person will be. You should come!" I then thought sure, before thinking no, I had a lot of work to do and I should really update the blog and I'm behind on TV and I'd really like to read a book... and then thought it would still be really cool to see The Wall. The next day he kept bugging me and I said nah, I'm sure someone else would like it more than I would. So he gave the ticket to my brother. I posted on Facebook that I'd turned down a ticket to The Wall and it might have been a mistake, and several people responded that it was historic and I HAD to get that ticket back. So I emailed my brother, who happily handed it back and even offered to babysit (best brother ever).

And boy, am I glad I changed my mind.

I've never been a huge fan of Pink Floyd. I've listened to a lot of their stuff, my husband is a Syd Barrett fan so he typically plays the early stuff a lot, but of their albums, The Wall is probably my favourite. In the late 80s, MuchMusic (the Canadian equivalent of MTV) used to play a lot of amazing music movies -- Tom Waits' Big Time seemed to air all the time, and The Wall was another one they showed on an endless loop. I think I saw it for the first time when I was 15, and thought it was absolutely insane, and I've seen it once since. I knew the gist of the album -- Waters had been fed up with the audiences at the Pink Floyd shows, going so far as to spit on an audience member at one show. After the incident he apologized, but said sometimes he was just so frustrated by the way the audience acted that he wished he could construct a wall between himself and them.

The Wall is about Pink (who is basically Waters himself), and through 4 sides of the record (in the olden days when it was on vinyl and cassette) you go through Pink's childhood and then teenage years, through to his marriage and the dissolution of that. Throughout his life he constructs a mental wall that separates himself from the rest of society, and at the end of side 2 the wall is complete. Side 3 is about how isolated he feels and how he realizes that he actually needs the people that he's just shut out, and through the end of the album he imagines himself a pseudo-dictator before putting himself on trial, demanding over and over, "Tear down the wall!!" before it comes crashing down and he begins to see a possible new life for himself.

The tour for The Wall was incredibly expensive, and the band only did a few shows to support it. It was revived in 1990 when the Berlin Wall fell, and that's the last anyone saw of it. On Wednesday night Roger Waters kicked off the new tour of The Wall, and the show was unbelievable.

When you walked into the stadium, the sides of the wall were constructed on the stage. Through the first couple of songs, Waters was on a riser behind the wall and the audience went nuts to see him. When the band moved into "Another Brick in the Wall," everyone in the audience was singing along. Suddenly an enormous puppet of the Teacher from the crazed movie, all bug-eyed and menacing, appeared on the side of the stage and began looming over the audience. The song switched to Part 2, and the now-familiar, "We don't need no education" rang out throughout the auditorium before a group of children from the Regent Park Children's Choir ran onto the stage and began singing the children's chorus part of the song. It was glorious (they even sang it in the British accents!!) Roger came around to the front to join them, and they all pointed at the teacher and yelled, "Hey! Teacher! Leave those kids alone!" Awesome. Here's a pretty good video of the song (this only picks up with Part 2):



You'll notice in the background of the video that as the song progressed, roadies came onto the stage and started building up the wall. This continued throughout the show, with various bricks being moved around and used in interesting ways, projecting images on it (some of fallen soldiers as he sang the song about losing his father in the war) and for "Mother," a huge inflatable puppet of the overprotective mom much like the Teacher came out of the side and again loomed over the proceedings.

By the end of the second side, the wall was almost complete except for one final block, and Waters stepped up to that block and sang "Goodbye Cruel World" through it before the wall was complete:



It was gorgeous. At that point there was an intermission, and then the band returned and did "Hey You" entirely behind the wall, before singing "Is Anybody Out There," which was poignant and effective when we were the people on the other side of the wall. They were hidden behind it and you could see nothing but this wall separating you and this desperate man hidden behind. It was very effective. There was darkness, before a square opened up on the one side of the wall and you could see Waters sitting in a lounge chair watching the television, and he sang "Nobody Home" before coming to the front of the stage and performing a few songs on his own with the band still behind the wall. One of those was Comfortably Numb, which was possibly my favourite song of the night (another singer came to the top of the wall to sing Gilmour's parts). It blew my mind. This video's a little bumpy, but it has great sound and you can hear how beautiful the song was:



From there we moved into Pink's bigger crisis, where he's the dictator, and at this point Waters and the band came out all wearing black hoodies and you couldn't see any of them. A friend of mine with me who is a huge Pink Floyd fan told me that the idea behind that number was to show that the audience would clap for anyone, and who's to say that's actually Roger Waters wearing that hoodie? (It was.) During this segment of the show there was a remote controlled giant inflated pig flying above the audience's heads with capitalist slogans all over it.

The most spectacular number was at the end, "The Trial." The band once again moved behind the stage (it could have been pre-recorded for all I know) and Waters sat on a riser on the edge of the stage singing while we watched the long section from the movie projected onto the front of the wall. By the end of it the audience was all on its feet, fists pumping in the air and shouting, "Tear down the wall! Tear down the wall!" and then... it came down. It was incredible.



In the midst of the rubble, Waters came out with his band and quietly sang "Outside the Wall," as one spotlight shone on him to show the hope of his future. He then thanked everyone for coming and left.

The show was epic; if you have a chance to see it, I can't recommend it enough. The only thing that no longer works in the context of this massive production (if it ever did, to be honest) is the anti-capitalist message throughout. It's hard to come down hard on capitalism when you're charging $250 a ticket. But that's a pretty small nitpick against an otherwise awesome show.

Gavin Friday: A Night at Carnegie Hall

So, only two weeks later...

It all began with a dream. As teenagers, Bono and Gavin Friday would play music together or with friends, and at one time they joked that they'd probably get so good they could all play Carnegie Hall together. It only took 35 years, but on October 4, 2009, Gavin and Bono got their wish.

As I may have mentioned in my previous post, I adore Gavin Friday, and haven’t seen him perform live since 1996, the last time he came to Toronto. So when I heard he was going to be playing Carnegie Hall, I bought the tickets. It was only after I bought them that I discovered the gig was, in fact, for his 50th birthday party (he turns 50 tomorrow, on October 9), and that Carnegie Hall had been rented out as a birthday gift to him from Bono. According to the poster, the gig was going to include the likes of some of the most eclectic and unique talents in the music world today. While part of me secretly wished they’d all come down with some mass flu, leaving Gavin the only person left to perform, I thought it would be cool to see him perform with everyone else. The concert was part of the Red (Nights) series, run by Bono, where the proceeds go to fighting AIDS in Africa.

But what would the format of the evening be? Would they perform Gavin Friday songs on his behalf? Would he perform with them? Would they perform their own songs? It turned out to be a little bit from each column.

We left our hotel in SoHo and arrived via the subway. As soon as I emerged from the underbelly of NY, there was Carnegie Hall in front of me. It’s always been one of those places of wonderment, the place where every musician one day hopes to perform (as a pianist many years ago, I knew I didn’t have a hope, though I know at least one person who accomplished it), the place where every music fan hopes to go and listen to music sound like it’s never sounded before. It was beautiful.

Inside, it was much smaller than I thought. Perhaps as a way of boosting or altering the acoustics, the balconies are very narrow, and only jut out three walls from the sides of the place (it’s like box seats all around) and only at the very top are there balconies that look like they might have 5 or 6 rows of people. I have no idea what the capacity of the place is, but I would guess somewhere in the vicinity of 2500 people.

There was a lot of buzz, and many people rushing up the aisles to hug other people sitting closer. There was a feeling of family and friends all gathering for a celebration; not a bunch of fans showing up to a gig. I was surrounded by several people who were there for U2 (you could tell the way they would shriek and throw themselves out of their seats every time they caught a glimpse of Bono; he stood off the side of the stage for most of it, watching from the doorway, and one woman in front of me kept flapping her arm in the air waving at him, as if he was going to wave back at her). And then suddenly, with the lights still up, Gavin just wandered onto the stage, head partly down, one hand in pocket, other on his chin, like he was contemplating something deep. Many in the audience probably didn’t know who he was. I did, but thought, am I not supposed to clap? Is Carnegie Hall like a church or something? Why isn’t anyone clapping? Finally, someone at the front began clapping wildly and the rest of the place followed suit.

Maurice Seezer was at the piano (where he stayed for most of the night with the exception of hitting the drums a few times). Gavin took the mic and sang “Apologia,” one of the tracks from his first album, and one of my all-time favourite songs. It’s almost entirely played on piano, and I remember learning it on mine to play along. The problem was, my piano was out of tune by a semitone, so I played it all on the black keys, wondering why Maurice Seezer would have written the song in such a strange key, not realizing that he hadn’t, and had written it in quite a straight-ahead key, but my silly piano should have been tuned differently. D’oh. Anyway, it was so lovely to see him sing, just him, a backing band, and Seezer off to the side. He finished the song, and was joined on stage by Bono, Larry, and Edge (much screaming from the audience) and they all did T.Rex’s “Children of the Revolution,” which Bono and Gavin had recorded for the Moulin Rouge soundtrack. They were accompanied by Flo & Eddie singing backup, who were once known better as “The Turtles” (think “Happy Together”... I remember being 12 and going to see them at some nostalgia concert with my dad where they played with Donnie and Marie Osmond and Herman’s Hermits. I touched Donnie). Then Adam Clayton came out and joined them by practically sitting behind everyone else and they played Gavin’s song, “I Want to Live,” and it was pretty awesome. (Photo by GavinFriday.com)

Next, Antony of Antony and the Johnsons joined Gavin at the mic. I’d never seen this guy live, nor had I watched him on YouTube or anything. My brother adores his stuff, and my husband is hot and cold about it. I was expecting a bald guy, since a recent album had him with extremely short hair. Instead a very, very tall person with long black hair stood next to Gavin, towering over him. Gavin introduced him to the audience, and Antony looked jittery and nervous, bouncing around, and he had a big baggy shirt that he managed to pull down over his right hand, while his left one flung about in the air while he sang. I’d heard Antony & the Johnsons before when my husband played me one of his CDs, and I hadn’t been a big fan of what I’d heard (his voice is an acquired taste). But when he harmonized with Gavin during “Got What He Wanted,” I thought he was perfect. Well... I need to be careful in using gender pronouns. Gavin introduced him as “this beautiful man” to which Antony promptly replied, “I’m not a man,” and Gavin sputtered for a moment, laughed, and came back beautifully with, “I’m sorry... this beautiful PERSON.” There’s been rumours that Antony is a transgender, or that he’s part female/part male, but none of that really matters – what mattered to me was how stunning and powerful his voice was, and how it fit the song perfectly.

After Antony left the stage (by practically running off it before the song was done) the first “surprise guest” was longtime U2 manager Paul McGuiness. He recounted the story of how the Virgin Prunes had been the mandatory opening act for U2 in the early, even when he didn’t want them to be, because Bono had insisted on it. He said once Bono showed up almost late for a gig, right before U2 was to take the stage, and he did a couple of songs and then ran off, asking Paul why the audience was in such a bad mood. Paul replied, “Oh, that’s probably because right before you got here, the Prunes had been throwing pig entrails at them.” Ha!!

Then Courtney Love took the stage, and while I’ve got the early Hole albums and I’m a fan of early Courtney, I can’t say I’ve been a huge fan of her stuff lately. But her introductory speech for what came next (something that was a complete, utter, joyous surprise for me) was genuine, heartfelt, and fannish. She held her speech in front of her, written out on pieces of paper, and her hands were shaking as she held them aloft and read the introduction. She said she came to Trinity College in Dublin in the late 70s to take a degree in theology (?!) and her main goal had been to go and see the band that had recorded “I Will Follow.” She finally saw U2 in a small place one night, and said they filled her with joy, inspiration, hope, and light. Then she went to see another band, three days later, called The Virgin Prunes, “And they took all that away,” she laughed. She said if Bono was the Angel Gabriel, Gavin was Lucifer. They were dark, disgusting, fierce, angry, and awesome.

Let me pause first to say that the one band I’ve always wished I could have seen in their early days was the Prunes. I’ve often wished I’d been born 15 years earlier, and could have been in Dublin in the 1970s and seen them perform live. I’ve read about them, I’ve watched grainy videos on YouTube, I’ve bought bootleg VHS tapes of early concerts that were as scratchy and unwatchable as if they were the 1000th copy of the 1000th copy of it.

And then... Courtney said that after breaking up in 1985, they’ve never played together since. And here, for the first time in over 20 years, were the Virgin Prunes, reunited.

I almost fell off my chair. I couldn’t breathe for a moment. Gavin and Dik Evans walked out onto the stage. Dik looked far younger than I’ve seen him look in pictures and had these crazy silver glasses on. Singer JG Thirlwell joined them, and then Guggi wandered out last. Guggi. The Id to Gavin’s Ego. Or... the Ego to Gavin’s Id. Hm. How about the Yin to Gavin’s Yang?

Whatever. I was FREAKING OUT while everyone around me was clapping politely. Remember that religious experience I mentioned in my post a few days ago? Well, count this as Religious Experience #2. They first played “Sweethome Under White Clouds” (and it sounded even better, rawer, fiercer, than it does on album) and then the classic “Caucasian Walk.” Oh. My. God. I was in Heaven. It was GLORIOUS.

Next up, the divine Ms. Martha Wainwright, who sings like an angel, and on this night looked like one, too. I haven’t had the pleasure of seeing her live before, but WOW, now I must. I adore her album, and she was incredible. She did “Thief of Your Heart,” the song that Sinead performs on the In the Name of the Father soundtrack, and (forgive me Sinead) it was even better than the original.

The next one was Maria McKee. Now, I remember a looong time ago Bono was touting a very young Maria McKee as the next big thing, and I went out and bought a Lone Justice album and it didn’t do much for me. I’ve never been into that whole country thing. She always irked me a bit in interviews and seemed to be a bit of an attention hog on stage, and while she seemed to do that at this show, it actually worked. She and Gavin did “Ballad of Immoral Earnings” from Threepenny Opera, and it was awesome. She was falling on him, he was leaning on her, they acted boozy and it was amazing – the song is about two people reminiscing about their immoral life together, and it can only be done successfully by people who can convince you they’ve been together that long. Considering she’s been performing with Gavin since the late 80s, it worked. I had a whole new respect for her.

Courtney then came back out and sang “The Light Pours out of Me” by Magazine with Gavin, and it was great, although she was wearing a different outfit than she’d been earlier, and then tossed her hat, then the skirt, and then the top part of the dress, and wasn’t wearing much when it was over, but it was just kind of... Courtney. And it fit. She was great, and you could tell she adored Gavin and his music.

Next up: Rufus Wainwright (how could there be THAT much talent in one family?!) and Scarlett Johansson. Now, first, I have to say that when it comes to her acting, I’m a big fan of Ms. Scarlett’s. But as a singer? Not so much. I have no idea why she was there other than Bono might have thought it lent some star power to the evening or something. But... whatever. Kudos to her for not only knowing who Gavin was, but for performing “Mr. Pussy” from the third album. She sang one verse, Gavin sang the next, and Rufus stood in the background going, “Pussaaaaay,” underneath it. It was pretty hilarious. At the end of the song, Fred Armisen of Saturday Night Live came walking on stage slowly dressed all in purple, like Prince (the character he often plays on SNL) and began chattering at the audience saying he was Prince (I think some people actually fell for it, which is a little crazy) and then asked Scarlett if she would leave with him, and they left arm in arm. (She’d been on SNL the night before.) They left, and Rufus and Gavin performed a song called “Benares” which I’ll admit I didn’t know, but they were fantastic together. (Photo from GavinFriday.com)

And then Shane MacGowan stumbled onto the stage with a giant bottle of scotch in one hand. He’d clearly been at it all day... actually, he’s probably been in a pretty much permanent drunken state since about 1972... and he could barely find his way to the mic. He grabbed it and performed “A Rainy Night in Soho,” screaming and swaying and barely staying upright. At one point he began swinging the microphone wire, forgetting that unlike in a pub, the mikes aren’t duct-taped to the wire, and sure enough the mic detached and sailed backwards into the drum kit. He walked back, fell over trying to grab it, snapped it back on, and slurred the next verse. Chorus... and then he grabbed the cord and swung it again, with the same result. I know people love MacGowan and the Pogues (and trust me, I think a lot of their stuff was amazing) but seeing him was just kind of sad. He’d like a walking casualty. Or... barely walking casualty. A couple of people helped him off the stage after the song, and then Gavin came back on, rejoined by Maria McKee, and they did “Falling off the Edge of the World,” and it was a great version, even if her voice was a little shrill and harsh at points (I’d have rather seen him do that solo, or even with Courtney).

By the way, for the entire show, Bono stood at the doorway to the stage, watching while trying not to be seen, and you could see his genuine reactions to most. Larry often joined him, similarly bending over to crane his neck to see the action while trying not to be seen, and Edge was there, too, during the Virgin Prunes set. The woman in front of me kept standing up and waving wildly whisper-screaming, “Bono!” as if he was going to wave back at her. Sigh.

There was an intermission then, where I spotted Ali Hewson (Bono’s wife) and their eldest girls Eve and Jordan sitting near the front. Ali’s always been a major, major idol of mine. And for the record, she’s even more gorgeous in person than in pictures. Imagine marrying a guy right out of high school and he becomes one of the most famous people on the planet... that can’t have been an easy thing to have done all these years.

Post-intermission, Joel Grey marched onto the stage carrying a cane, and performed the “Wilkommen” song from Cabaret, which was AWESOME and got a standing ovation from part of the crowd (my husband: “Who’s that?” Me: “Joel Grey!! The original host from Cabaret??” Hubby: [Blank look.] Me: “The guy who cut Dawn right before Buffy saved her by jumping to her death?” Him: “Ah!”) He left and Gavin was joined by Joseph Arthur, who performed “Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves” (wicked) and then Gavin performed “You Take Away the Sun,” dedicating it to Caroline van Oosten de Boer, which was amazing.

Irish author Patrick McCabe was the next to appear, reading from Breakfast on Pluto (that movie with Cillian Murphy as a cross-dresser; if you’ve seen it, then you’ve seen Gavin: he’s the gypsy guy who falls for him). Then U2 came back out and performed King of Trash, much to the audience’s delight. Lydia Lunch was next, walking out and spitting “Knives in the Drain” at the audience, flipping us all off at the end and storming off in typical punk-bitch style.

But then came the second highlight of the night for me. Gavin walked out with a towering man named Eric Mingus (who I later discovered is the son of the legendary Charlie) and I had no idea who this guy was. They performed Caruso, and Eric’s voice was a little wavery early on, but when it came to the loud parts, he was awesome. Was he punk? Rock? Who was he? Then at the end, Gavin was singing the chorus while Eric was setting up a standing mic (they’d been sitting) and I thought oh my god, he’s going to actually sing the Caruso part (in the CD track, Gavin talks and they synch it into an original recording of the opera singer Caruso singing) and sure enough, he did. And it was beautiful. Was he an opera singer? No, because then he began growling and making snarling noises. I looked him up when I got home and he’s an avant-garde jazz/pop/rock/ you name it singer. I would love to see that guy again. (Photo from GavinFriday.com)

And then... came the big surprise for the evening. Bono came out to say the next person was a woman who had transcended music, had changed it, she was the best, she was the rawest, she was the east, she was the west, she was the right, she was the left (when it comes to Bono’s speeches, they’re never subtle) and I thought who the hell is it? Madonna?? And... it was Lady Gaga. The place went NUTS. I groaned and put my face in my hands. Why was she there?! Why did Bono like her? I’m not a fan. NOT a fan. The woman is talented, yes. But when I was in the UK in April, I saw her on some daytime talk show and she could barely sing (I thought it was an impersonator and didn’t realize it was actually her) and she was pulling all these stunts, walking around London with a teacup and saucer and throwing diva fits when she left it behind once. I hate most of her music, and everyone talks about what a talented pianist she is like NO ONE else in music plays piano like that. A lot of them do. I’ll take Tori Amos over her any day.

Anyway, she came out and was wearing a lingerie/bathing suit completely sheer see-through thing that made Courtney look overdressed (the guy behind me whistled and went, “Well THAT was worth the 250 bucks right there!”) and she said she’d cheated and had written a birthday song for Gavin last night, but had written part of it before... and she basically sang Poker Face with some new (terrible) lyrics. Meanwhile Bono stood just off the stage grinning and clapping and smiling and looking at the audience for their reaction the whole time. I was a little disappointed that he was so bowled over by her superstardom. I believe she’ll be forgotten in about 2 years.

Anyway... aside from the end of the show, she got the only standing ovation of the entire place of the entire night. Sad. (I shouldn’t say entire place. My husband and I stayed rooted to our seats.)

Antony came back out with Gavin and performed “Angel” (you would have heard it in the movie Romeo + Juliet) with Flo and Eddie. Another win for Antony. Next up was Chloe Webb (remember her as Nancy in “Sid and Nancy”?) who performed/talked through “Love Is Just a Word” (there’s not a lot of singing in that one) and she was actually very interesting. Gavin came out and planted a kiss on her lips and she looked a little surprised and flustered. Sigh. To have traded places with her for a minute...

Gavin came and sang “Another Blow on the Bruise” and it was spectacular (he had Edge backing him up) and then Andrea Corr of The Corrs came out to sing “Time Enough for Tears.” And then, another highlight, Bono came out with Maurice to sing “The Last Song I’ll Ever Sing,” one of my all-time fave songs of Gavin’s from his third album, and it was GORGEOUS.

And then, for us, the FAR more interesting surprise guest of the night. Laurie Anderson had been on the bill, and I was interested in seeing her avant-garde performance art, simply because I’d seen a movie she’d done in the mid-80s that was insane, and I knew she was a big influence on Gavin. I’d had a sense that she might not come out alone, and I was right – she showed up with her partner, Lou Reed. My husband freaked out, the audience began going, “Loooooouuuuuu” (“Are they saying, Boo-urns?”) and they were accompanied by John Zorn, the cutting edge sax player. Laurie had her weird electric violin, Lou had his ugly guitar, and Zorn began screeching out some of the loudest noise you’d ever heard. Between the three of them they created a complete horrible cacophony, which suddenly turned into something quite stunning when it all began blending. I’ve never heard music transform itself like that partway through. What started as sounding like something from Metal Machine Music had become a symphony of beauty. Gavin then came out and joined them and performed “Sonnet 40” (he’s been working with the genius Gavin Bryars and this is one of their projects), and then he began singing “Sweet Jane,” joined by Boozy MacGowan, Larry and Edge, Flo & Eddie. Throughout the song many of the others joined them, with Bono ad-libbing a verse, “Gavin had a birthday/ Neither big or small...” At the end, Gavin thanked everyone for coming, and there was a standing ovation and everyone launched into “Jean Genie” (and despite my hardest hoping, Bowie didn’t suddenly surface, dammit).

And then... it was over. It was one of the most amazing musical nights I’ve experienced, and I’m so happy I’d done this one crazy spontaneous thing and had just bought the tickets and gone with it. I’ll never forget it.

Happy birthday, Gavin Friday.

Gavin Friday: My Musical God

So, the other day in my post I mentioned where I was going to be Sunday night. And I promised to give you a full review of the show when I got back. But first... (eye rolls from my regular readers, saying to themselves, “Of course, there’s ALWAYS something to say first”) some background.

The year: 1987. My husband saw David Bowie for the first time. Being a lifetime Bowie fan, but only being 15 at the time, he missed the Thin White Duke, and the Glass Spider Tour was the first time he’d see him. It was exciting, but he was at the CNE Grandstand (Canadians who remember that venue typically remember it as crap) and he couldn’t see very well.

The year: 1990. My husband and I were now dating (yeah, we’ve been together forever) and he went to see Bowie’s “Sound + Vision” tour. Bowie came out on stage behind a white sheet and did a dance, and then the curtain dropped. My husband had great seats and there was Bowie, standing before him for the first time. My husband’s heart nearly stopped, and he couldn’t move. He came home and described it as a religious experience at a concert. I was jealous.

The year: 1988. I was reading a biography of U2 called “The Unforgettable Fire,” in which the author interviewed every family member and friend associated with the band, and he referred to “The Village.” This was a group of misfits in Dublin that included Paul Hewson, Dave Evans and his brother Dik, Derek Rowan and his brother Trevor, Fionan Hanvey, and David Watson. With the exception of Fionan (whose name was pretty exceptional), they decided that their names were boring and they needed to come up with better names, pseudonyms they would use in the Village. Paul Hewson was renamed Bono Vox; Dave Evans became The Edge. Derek Rowan was christened Guggi; his brother Trevor was Strongman. David Watson became Dave-iD Busaras. Dik remained... Dik. And Fionan Hanvey was renamed, by Bono, “Gavin Friday.” It was this particular man who captured my attention as I read through the book (which, while I loved it at the time, turned out to contain quite a number of errors, and wasn’t exactly heralded by U2 upon its release). Not only did the stories fascinate me, but there was a picture of him in the book, and he was, in a word, beautiful. (That's him on the right in the second row. BEAUTIFUL.)

The members of the Village loved music, but they realized they liked different types of music. Bono and Edge joined Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen, Jr. and formed U2, while the rest of them added a drummer and a few transient members and called themselves The Virgin Prunes. U2 were immediately the more commercial band of the two, singing of religion, inspiration, hope, politics, while the Prunes were the darker of the two, perfecting “art punk,” putting on crazed performances that included spraying blood on the audience or marching around with pigs’ heads on stakes. In other words, they made the Sex Pistols look like New Kids on the Block.

In the beginning U2 would only play a gig if the venue booked the Prunes, but after they got signed to Island, that practice had to end, and they went their separate ways. Gavin remained best friends with Bono (to this day) and became a massive influence on Bono’s own stage performance. Bono is the first to admit that everything he’s ever done on stage has been stolen from Gavin. Gavin would walk into the audience and choose someone to dance with on the floor. Bono did that in the beginning until the band became too popular, and then he began pulling women up onto the stage to dance with them. Gavin would climb stage equipment; Bono almost killed himself climbing some of the huge stages that U2 played. Bono’s charisma, long soliloquies on the microphone, attitude – all from Gavin. Even those platform black shoes and black outfits that Bono wears: Gavin was wearing them first. In 1985 the Prunes split, and Gavin began listening to different forms of music.

The year: 1989. December 27, 1989, to be exact. (There are some dates you’ll never forget.) I walked into Sunrise Records on Yonge Street in Toronto and found Gavin Friday’s first solo record, “Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves.” (Solo in the sense that he wasn’t with the Prunes, but it’s co-written and co-performed by Gavin’s musical partner, Maurice Seezer.) Hands trembling with this treasure (this was before the Internet allowed you to hear obscure music from anywhere in the world), I carried it up to the desk, where the clerk told me he’d just seen Gavin perform in Toronto two weeks earlier, where he played some cabaret hall with candelabra on the tables. I would have been underage and wouldn’t have gotten in, but I was still bummed to have missed him. I hoped I’d see him soon. (I’d have a long, long wait ahead of me.) I took this CD home and put it on... and 45 minutes later, my life had changed. I had heard some of the most extraordinary music I’d ever heard; mixtures of cabaret, pop, ballads. It opened with three stanzas of Oscar Wilde’s “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” set to music, and since at this point I was just discovering my obsession with Oscar Wilde, it was love at first note. This was not the man who stood on the stage screaming and throwing pig’s blood at people. This was a wordsmith, a man capable of writing such beautiful music I felt transported. He could sing beautifully, and then snarl into the mic; he put on personas, and became the very person he was singing about. I’d never heard anything like it.

The year: 1996. Gavin Friday FINALLY comes to Toronto. His third album, “Shag Tobacco” (even better than the first) had just been released, and I was more in love than ever with this magical beast from Ireland who had completely transformed my taste in music. I stood with a smallish group of people in the Rivoli in downtown Toronto, while two people stood on stage, and a spotlight hit the red velvet curtain at the back of the stage. The curtain parted, and there, standing mere feet away from me, was Gavin Friday, with a martini in one hand, and his other arm swept up in the air holding back the curtain. I lost all feeling in my entire body. He stepped out onto the stage and began the first song, and everything and everyone in the room completely disappeared. It was me and Gavin. No one else existed. Nothing else existed. He was singing to me, and me only. After the fifth song, someone said something beside me and I was jolted out of this reverie like I’d just awakened from a deep sleep. I’ve never experienced anything like this before or since. And then I realized: I’d just had my religious experience at a concert. And it was breathtaking.



A few months later, he announced he was coming back, this time to Lee’s Palace. I was working for the student newspaper at my university, and so I called Island Records to see if I could interview him. They said no problem. A few months earlier I’d bought his biography online from the author, Caroline van Oosten de Boer, who had self-published it, and runs his official website and is like a one-woman PR machine for him (all in the name of fandom). I can’t even remember how I’d tracked it down, but somehow I bought it from her and she’d mailed it to me from Amsterdam. So I contacted her to see if there were any questions I should ask, and she playfully suggested a couple that she said he was often coy about answering.

He called my house and asked for me (hearing him say my name was just... sigh...) and I began. In the beginning, the answers were all “Yes,” “No,” and I thought oh great. I’ve got Lou Reed on the phone here. But you had to earn his trust. And after about 4 or 5 questions, I did. He became animated, talking excitedly about the latest music he’d been writing, and how he’d scored the soundtrack to "In the Name of the Father," allowing the Protestant marching drums in the opening track to be at war with the Catholic hand-held drum, and allowing them to build and build throughout the song until they both just crash into oblivion. He was lovely.

At the show, he got to the part where he’d come down into the audience to dance with someone, often a slow dance. (A friend of ours was with us at both gigs, and he admitted that regardless of your sexual orientation, Gavin was such a sexual creature that just drew everyone in the audience in that it didn’t matter if you were male, female, gay, or straight, you wanted to go home with him.) Gavin came toward me, and the sea of people parted. He got closer, and closer, and I thought my heart would leap from my chest. And then... he chose MY HUSBAND. And danced with him. I’d never been so jealous of my husband in my LIFE. Like, whatEVER, I am so much prettier than him.

Ahem. Anyway.

That was the last time Gavin ever came to Toronto. I joined Caroline’s mailing list to keep up-to-date on his shows, but they were few and far between, and 1996’s Shag Tobacco was Gavin’s last studio album (he’s apparently going to be releasing one in 2010). He never came anywhere near us again, and I would long to go to the shows she’d mentioned he was doing in the UK. Sigh...

Years later, I posted something over at Whedonesque.com. One of the administrators contacted me asking if I was the Nikki Stafford who’d written Bite Me. I said I was, and she said she’d give me a VIP password so my name would show up as a different colour, which was pretty cool. Until then, I (and many of you, probably) knew her only as Caroline. But she emailed me a follow-up from a different account, and that’s when I saw her full name: Caroline van Oosten de Boer. You could have knocked me over with a feather. Let me get this straight: Somewhere on the other side of the world is a woman who believes Gavin Friday and Joss Whedon are the two greatest men of the modern age? I’m sorry... are we twins?! It was awesome.

SO. About three weeks ago she sends out a post announcing that Gavin Friday and his friends would be playing at Carnegie Hall. In New York. Which isn’t that far away, technically. I mean, it’s a 90-minute plane ride. It’s not exactly England or Ireland, here. I forwarded it to my husband, with the note, “Sigh... so close, yet so far away.” He emailed me back, “Let’s go! Just buy them. Let’s go.” I sat on it, and the day they went on sale, I was about to walk into an office meeting at 11. At 10:59, I thought what the hell, and logged onto the site and bought tickets. About 10 rows back, they came out to $500. Gulp... $250 per ticket?? The timer at the top started counting down. I had 10 minutes to make this purchase. I frantically started calling my husband, who, as usual, was NOT PICKING UP HIS PHONE. I eventually decided what the hell, and bought them. The first spontaneous thing I’d done since having my first child. And then I realized I didn’t have a babysitter. After a couple of panicked days trying to get THAT together, everything was a go, and I was off to see Gavin Friday.

Oh yeah, and there were others on the bill, but, unlike 90% of that audience (sadly), I was there to see Gavin, and Gavin only. I couldn’t wait.

Tomorrow: The concert review.

Where I'll Be Tonight...

Click to enlarge. A full review to come later this week when I'm back home.

360 Degrees of U2

So... back in April, it was my birthday. My husband, who's the WORST with surprises (he can't keep a surprise to save his life), decided to surprise me with the mother of all gifts: he'd secured me tickets to the opening night of U2's North American tour, complete with wristbands to the inner "Red Zone" circle surrounding the stage, the flight, a hotel, AND a friend to go with (you all know her on here as fb). While sometimes his job drives me nuts, it has its perks -- he's a golf writer and a music journalist, so if he's not flying around the world to play a course and review it, he's flying across the country to interview Michael Bublé... I'll never forget the night Feist called at dinnertime for him to interview her and I said, "Make it quick, I've gone to a lot of trouble for dinner!" and as he took the phone I thought, sheesh, what is WRONG with me... I've gone from crazy music fan to some shrewish housefrau.

Among his travels, he's become friends with a guy who is one of the heads of LiveNation, the concert promoter who puts on all the gigantic shows. And U2 is one of their bands. One phone call to his buddy, and he had my birthday gift all ready.

So I'm here now to tell you all about my U2 experience. First, I'd been to Chicago just the weekend before to my stepbrother's wedding (pleas to the family to switch it to the second weekend so I could combine it with my U2 excursion went unheeded, dammit) so I'd gotten to the know the lay of the land pretty well. I'd been to Chicago many times, but not recently, so it was nice to get myself oriented the following weekend.

So this past Saturday, I stepped off the plane at Midway Airport with my friend F, and we passed through the security gates after clearing customs (I had the same guy I'd had the week before)... to be faced with about 60 blue-suited security folks all lined up in the foyer. It actually stopped me in my tracks for a second, and you could tell they were rather amused by our faces. Then I leaned over to F and said, "Oh no, they've found you out!" and then thought immediately, "Uh oh... I probably shouldn't have said that in an airport..." but then one of them winked at us and said, "Don't be alarmed." We passed through their midst quickly and as we got out and onto the shuttle bus, I joked, "Maybe U2 were on the next flight... this is, after all, the airport where private jets land." F went nuts, thinking maybe this could be true, and then to add to it the shuttle bus driver made a comment about how U2 had landed at Midway Airport. As we got off the bus, F made a beeline to the driver to find out if it had, in fact, been at the same time as our plane, but it turns out they'd arrived on Thursday.

So now it was off to the Park Hyatt to pick up the tix, where my husband's friend was staying with the band (eeee!) and where he was leaving the tickets at the concierge's desk for me. I knew where it was, because it was about a block away from the hotel I'd stayed at the weekend before. We came up the same street, turned the corner, and this is what I saw:



People were EVERYWHERE. For half a second I thought, "Ooh, was there an accident?" before realizing no, they knew where the band was staying, and knew they'd have to come out of there at some point! Cops everywhere, security lining the building... and I had a legitimate reason to actually go in. What to do? I went in. We walked over to the front desk, I gave my name, then tried my husband's name, then tried spelling my name... turns out the last name had been misspelled (according to them... when I saw the envelope, it was spelled correctly, I just think they weren't reading the handwriting correctly or something). The funny thing is, there were a bunch of people staying at the Park Hyatt who were loitering in the lobby with digital cameras, sort of looking around in a "Doo doo dooo... hm... I wonder what I should do today. I could... go out? Or I could stand here? Hm. I just don't know... maybe I'll stand here. I'll turn my camera on, too. You never know when I might see a vase with a pretty flower in it." Har.

So F and I tried to make conversation and wander away from the desk while they looked for the envelope, thinking the longer it takes them to find it, the better our chances of actually seeing the guys up close. No such luck... they found it (dammit!) and then they wanted my ID, which I'd left at the hotel near the airport (double dammit!) but I explained I didn't have it, and spelled the name of the guy who'd left it for me (it's a tough name and difficult to spell, but I'm an EDITOR, for god's sakes... I don't get these things wrong) and luckily, she handed it off. :)

(By the way, that wasn't the only time I was asked for my ID! I stopped at a Walgreen's because my ragweed allergies were acting up a bit and I'd left my Reactine at home, so I went in and they had a pkg with only 5 Claritin in it, which is what I wanted, but you had to go up to the counter to get them, so I did, handed them the slip of paper and they asked for my ID. F had hers, so she handed it over and they said no, sorry, they needed a PASSPORT. WHAT?! It's frickin' ALLERGY medication, and it's over-the-counter. No can do, they said... this is a Canadian license (oh well, excuse me) and they needed the prime minister to verify she was actually who she said she was or something... eventually she was able to show a passport card she also had on her, and they handed it over. I politely asked, "Why all the fuss for allergy medication?" as the female pharmacist rang up the order, and she said, "There's an ingredient in there that you can use to make crystal meth." Uhhh... WHAT???!!... I think those were actually my exact words. She pointed out the ingredient, again apologized for the hassle, and said, "It's too bad that some people want to fry their brains, and then innocent people like yourself who sincerely need some cold medication have to go through all of this just to get it." We thanked her, I left... and the pills are still sitting in my purse. I was deathly afraid to take them, thinking there's no way I wanted anything in my body that you put in crystal frickin' meth. And then my husband later told me it's just a stimulant that's in allergy medication that makes it non-drowsy... Sigh.)

So back to my story... now we couldn't really loiter around the Park Hyatt, so we left. We went up the street, came back, the people were still there, we grabbed something to eat, came back, people were still there. Amused, I called my husband and asked if he'd heard from his friend, wondering if maybe they were already at the stadium and maybe these fans were waiting for nothing. My husband said no, he'd actually JUST gotten off the phone with him talking about something else, and the guy was there in the hotel with the band, so they were definitely still there. But honestly, at that point F and I figured the band would make a beeline from the hotel to their car and wouldn't hang about, so we didn't, either. I hope the fans actually got to see the guys, because it would suck they'd waited that long for nothing.

So I mapped out how we'd take the transit to Soldier's Field, and we started heading along the Mile looking at the shops (all of which I'd hit the weekend before, my poor credit card knows all too well) and then hit some landmarks, and kept walking, and walking, and before we knew it we were at Millennium Park with the Bean (if you haven't seen it, it's a lot of fun... it's a mirrored sculpture where you walk up and take a picture of yourself all distorted and looking squat and fat, but you end up with the skyline of Chicago behind you). Unfortunately all of the skyline pics I took had F in them, and she probably wouldn't want me to post them here, so all I have is this one shot of me close up with bad hair that the Chicago humidity made all crazy. ;)

Anyway, I'm being long-winded (what else is new? my readers say to themselves...) We eventually decided we were over halfway to Soldier's Field, we might as well walk the entire way. By the time we got to the stadium we joined massive crowds of people all coming at the same time. Snow Patrol were already into their set, but I'm not a huge fan, so I wasn't sad that I was missing anything.

Soldier's Field, if you haven't been there, is MASSIVE. Absolutely huge. And yet it was dwarfed in the presence of the gigantic stage set-up that U2 had with them. My husband's friend had emailed him months before it was released to the public, telling him his mind will be blown when he sees it. And my mind... was blown. Now, typically I'm not one to be awed by stage sets (I will admit that I joked at one point before the set that it reminded me of Bowie's Glass Spider, but while that one didn't actually serve much purpose on the tour, this set-up did). I'd rather just watch the band. But it's the functionality of this thing that has to be seen to be believed. (Or believed to be seen, I should say... U2 reference, yay!) This pic is Snow Patrol performing under it. Bono referred to it as the spaceship throughout the set, and it has a 360-degree screen and is surrounded by audience, rather than being at one end with the audience in front of the stage. And unlike another U2 tour (I think it was All That You Can't Leave Behind) where they had fans seated behind them but NEVER PLAYED TO THEM (said one of the fans seated behind them... yes, that was me brooding through the entire show in Toronto), this time the band used the entire setup. You can see the screens, and four giant arms holding it up (inside of which were the spotlight operators) and then there was an outer ring where audience members in the Red Zone were between the stage and it, and the band would walk along that outer ring, and two moving bridges would constantly swing around connecting the front part of the stage to the outer ring. I'm probably not describing it very well, but it was pretty cool, and functional. Unlike some godawful bombastic sets I've seen that are all show, no use, this one was pretty awesome.

Especially if you were standing where I was. How close was I? THIS CLOSE:



WOOOHOOOOOOO!!!!! Oh yeah, baby!! I took that pic, along with many, many others. Oh, you want to see more? OK! Here's Edge being cool:



Here's Bono looking like God:



And then doing it again, as he crossed the bridge toward me:



He came over to my side of the stage, reached down, was met with a sea of hands, moved his hand toward mine... and grabbed it. Oh my GOD I was the woman he was about to pull onto the stage during "With or Without You"!! My legs almost gave out as I was being pulled up, and my friend F was screaming and jumping up and down as I yelled, "Get some good pictures!!" And then he looked into my eyes, and then... Well, then the fantasy was over as the first encore started and my mind snapped back into reality, and they went into With or Without You, the song Bono USUALLY pulls someone up onto the stage for, but instead he was too busy playing with his fancy microphone that dropped from the sky like those old-fashioned ones in boxing rings... though this one looked more like the Target symbol.



As I mentioned earlier, the screens were really amazing. The screen was at the top, as you could see in the picture above, but throughout the set they began to break apart, and the screen at the top became a giant column that looked like it was about to consume the band, and allowed you to still see video footage of them on it while acting as a secondary light show. It was wicked:



Eventually the column collapsed down upon itself and the pieces came together, but it lowered, rather than raised itself, and now the screens were just above the heads of the band. It expanded again later in the set and eventually folded itself back up at the top. I was in awe. I remember discussing with F how difficult it must be to break this thing down after a show and rebuild it (as I said to her, "Sheesh, I hate packing my house to move... how the hell do you mark the boxes when you're packing THAT thing??") Turns out one set was built for the European tour, and two were built for the North American one and they criss-cross shows. So while U2 are playing two nights in Chicago on one set, the second set is already in Toronto being built. Then the set in Chicago is dismantled and taken to Boston, the band plays Toronto and leaves for Boston, and the Toronto one is dismantled, etc. It's a massive, massive undertaking, but it worked for me.

Are U2 the Rolling Stones of today, as one paper suggested the morning after the show, suggesting that fans don't care about new music from them and only want the greatest hits? Perhaps. When they perform "Pride" or "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," you can barely hear the band over the crowd belting it out. When they play the songs from the latest album, you can see a few people singing along, while the rest of them are wondering when they're going to get to "Where the Streets Have No Name." But I think U2 are still a very relevant band. The new material was actually really great stuff live, and while I'm STILL working on that album growing on me, I preferred the songs live.

And then there's the "message" portion of the show. There was a moment where Bishop Tutu addressed the audience from the screens and he began talking about children in Africa who would have died without the help of so many charitable people, but now they'll grow up to be doctors and teachers or whatever they want to be. These little faces flashed across the screens and I know it's meant to manipulate, but there was just something about this gigantic stadium filled to the rafters with fans who were completely silent to listen to this man talk that really choked me up. The children's faces flashed across the screens and I could feel my eyes welling up and I was desperately wiping them away hoping F wasn't noticing what a blubberer I was being. I've seen Bono pontificate from stage before and it's elicited little more than an eyeroll from me (oh really? You want us to urge our government to drop the debt and take it over ourselves through extra taxes, etc.? Well how about you lower that $250 price tag on your damn ticket and THEN I'll have extra money to give to them??) Ahem. But this time it was something different. During "Walk On" Bono talked about Aung San Suu Kyi, whom they wrote the song about, who is Burma's democracy leader but has been under house arrest since 1990, and the ruling militia refuses to give over any power to her or the people. They handed out masks with her face on them to everyone in the Red Zone and we were supposed to wear them during the song (I guess it's meant to be a "put yourself in her place for a minute" sort of thing -- here's a pic of a guy who kept his on the back of his head throughout the show, and was standing right beside me so I felt like someone was staring at me the entire time, which was a little unnerving) and instead most people held the masks above their heads, which I thought was a little more effective. Unfortunately, the floors were littered with her face after, which sort of killed the point for me -- did anyone really get the message if they just chucked the mask away the moment the show was over and allowed everyone to walk on her face rather than think about her plight? But for a few moments, Bono was able to let people know about her, and that was important.

The show was amazing, and yes, I have tickets to the Thursday show in Toronto and I cannot WAIT. Getting out of the Soldier's Field, on the other hand... what a horror show. There was one door -- ONE DOOR -- on the west side of the place and they funneled as many people through that as they could, where there was an iron fence waiting outside of it and we had to slowly shuffle along the fence, through a garden area, around a corner, and meet the traffic coming out of the other side, where they'd then barricaded the otherwise wide exit so it was this tiny thing, and then rather than let people use the sidewalks, they again shuffled us all over to the other side of the street toward the Field Museum so even THAT took forever. No word of a lie: the show was over at 11 (there was a curfew) and we got out of the place and onto the main street that was about 100 feet away at 12:40. It took less time for me to FLY FROM TORONTO than it did to get out of that stadium. What a nightmare.

But otherwise, it was a hell of a birthday gift. Thank you, hubby. :)

So... tell me about your U2 stories. Are you going to this tour?