WRITTEN ON December 7th, 2009 BY kiwivera AND STORED IN kiwiland

Tags: auckland, chris knox, concert, liam finn, neil finn, pearl jam

The last month was a month of absolute insanity, with work and nanowrimo taking up pretty much all of my time awake. Still, a girl’s gotta have some distractions so, even if the cultural life was way slower than what it should have been, there was still time to go to a couple of really good gigs.

First, there was Dave Dobbyn, the cool kiwi guy I talked about a wee while ago. He filled the Powerstation, in Auckland, with people of all ages. Except that there was more of an older age crowd than a younger one so we felt a bit out of place, at times, amongst all the sequins and ties. I guess that’s when you know that you’re getting old: when, after a day at work, you dress up for a concert like this instead of dressing down. Anyway, I digress. I don’t know if liking Dave Dobbyn’s music is cool or not but the fact is that I like it. A lot. And he totally made my night when he sang Slice of Heaven!

A few days later, my countdown finally reached zero and we headed to Mount Smart to see Pearl Jam (seeing them live again was one of the things on my long to do list and now that I can tick that off I actually think I might just leave it there, since I can’t wait to see them for a third time anyway!). If seeing my favourite band of all times play live wasn’t good enough, the opening acts just made the night so much more amazing. Especially Liam Finn, whom I discovered that I love. What an amazing artist. If you haven’t heard him yet, don’t waste any more time. He is incredibly talented and I will definitely keep my eyes peeled for the announcement of his future gigs.

So anyway, after Liam Finn came the always great Ben Harper with the Relentless 7 and even though I wasn’t as fascinated by them as I was by Liam Finn, it was still a great show. That meant that the crowd was well and truly warmed up for Pearl Jam when they came on stage. I can’t begin to explain you how happy I was to be singing along to their songs with them again, three years after seeing them live in Lisbon. Too many moments of that night stayed with me but there are two that I suspect will stay in my memory for a little longer: first, the crowd together singing the first half of Better Man and then Eddie Vedder, joined on stage by Liam Finn and Neil Finn (one of his “uncle Neils” as he referred to him, the other one being uncle Neil Young), to sing “Not Given Lightly” as a tribute to Chris Knox.

Chris Knox, an amazing kiwi singer/songwriter with a huge collection of major hits and great songs in his CV, suffered a stroke this year. As a result, he now can’t even talk. Artists all over the world got together, each choosing one of Chris Knox’s song to interpret and made a beautiful album called “Stroke”. All the proceeds from the album go towards his treatments. It was the only CD I got in November and it’s been playing almost non-stop at home. “Not Given Lightly” is only just my favourite Chris Knox song so I guess you can imagine how great it was to hear it being sung by the Finns and my dear Eddie.

Fast forward to December, last Friday to be exact. November madness has just ended and it’s now been replaced by the annual Christmas madness. Still, along we went to the beautiful Civic in Auckland to the Fly My Pretties gig. I had seen it on C4 a few days before. Their new album, “Story”, is Cool with capital c. They created this really cute story that is animated on the screen above them and Dick Weir sits in the corner as the narrator, telling us the story in between their songs. Apparently, and this is another piece of Kiwi culture I learnt on Friday, Dick Weir has a long career behind him on the radio and is a famous storyteller. Storyteller is one of those things, a bit like writing, I guess… We all think it’s easy to do until we see it done either really well or really badly and then realise that a lot goes into it. Weir did it amazingly well and it made me enjoy the bits of the concert without music as much as I enjoyed the music.

So there you go. My bank account isn’t looking too flash after all these musical incursions (but then again, it never does). I’m trying not to think about the fact that Rufus Wainwright is performing in Auckland in February and Lady Gaga is bring the Monster Ball tour here in March. I better start playing lotto.

P.s.: I heart youtube and youtubers who upload images of concerts I go to. That is all.