Rolling Stones Concert Review

Since my dad was the one who got the free tickets to see the stones from a fisherman friend of his, we ended up going just the two of us. I didn't find out until just before the Stones came on that my dad had never been to a rock concert in his life. So of course starting with the biggest one that will ever happen around here makes all kinds of logical sense.

My review of the Stones concert at Magnetic Hill is inside.

The trip over was pretty uneventful. I took a stack of CDs along and since we were going to see a show I started to talk about what we were listening to and why I enjoyed it or what I thought interesting about each album. Explaining the way Sarah Slean takes her classical music training and infuses that into Day One's essentially punk rock sound, or talking about what the hell Gord Downie was on about in some song or other on Music@Work, normally we would talk about something that we are both interested in separately, like politics or business or philosophy, but since the topic of the day was music I just figured I might as well explain what it is about it that takes up so much of my attention.

The first band to play was Les Trois Accords from Quebec, they sang and did their between-song banter in French, lending strength to my hypothesis that all Quebecers think that everyone in Moncton speaks French. They were fun to listen to, though, with hard rocking upbeat tunes. They sounded like they were on top of the world playing in front of so many people.

Our Lady Peace even disappointed my mediocre expectations for them. At least they did play their old Much Music favourites. The between-song banter was limited to 'thank you's and 'it's so great to be here's, very dull, indeed. The only exception was Raine Maida's attempt to get political on us, saying “This song is called 'Wipe That Smirk Off Your Face'... it's kind of indirectly referencing a certain politician.. George W. Fucking Bush.” (oh, edgy!)

During the last song they did they got the audience to sing along. Never before have I heard a sing-along crowd at a big concert made up entirely of female voices. Congratulations, Our Lady Peace, you're officially inducted into the order of band who are more famous than they deserve thanks to a photogenic lead singer. Take your place alongside The Cardigans, Bush and Garbage and tell David Usher I said 'hi — play Silver'.

Nearby quote from just before Maroon 5 started playing: “Is this Maroon 5? It is? OK, do you want to go for a walk then?” I don't listen to Magic 93 so I don't know anything about this band or any of their songs. This seemed to be the time of day for people to get up to take a leak and buy $3 hot dogs before the Tragically Hip and the Stones came on.

I personally was waiting for the Tragically Hip to come on stage. I haven't seen the Hip in years and I was hurting for some Gord Downie abstractly Canadian rock'n'roll lovin'.

They opened with Grace, Too from Day For Night, where Gord got to ad lib some lyrics about getting off a helicopter for a photo Raine Maida shouldn't have even bothered. He reminds me of half the people I run into most days, very angry but not really sure why.)

The Hip's set was wall-to-wall well-known hits. With the one obvious missing song, but he did make up some bits about hurricanes ripping up the Mississippi in the intro to 'Nautical Disaster', and then used the phrase 'New Orleans is Sinking', causing the obviously confused casual Hip fans in the crowd to cheer and then feel bad about it and stop abruptly.

Sadly the Hip only had a 55 minute set, which isn't enough time for Gord Downie to get really worked up enough to go into one of his famous rants. Also the crowd wasn't the expectant and oddness-hungry crowd you would get at a smaller (by comparison) show where they were the main attraction. People cheered for familiar songs like 'Little Bones', but it wasn't up for egging Gord on during one of his flourishes of wordplay. Not as good as the other Hip shows I've seen but I still love to hear those songs.

It was still very light out when the Hip ended their set, so I knew we were in for a long wait standing on the long-dead grass and giving expectant cheers to every sound guy and roadie to come on the stage.

On a side note, we did learn the chance of someone needing an emergency appendectomy on a given day: 80,000 to 1.

All afternoon the bands have been playing in front of a seven-story high steel tower that just served to make them look very very small. The entire thing was to provide light and background video for the Stones, and as soon as it was dark enough it exploded into light, with some excitement-building science-fictiony tunes behind what looked like an iTunes visualization. But that quickly gave way to a round of fireworks from the sides of the stage and the opening chords to 'Start Me Up'.

I refrained from any 'haha, they're old' jokes all day out of respect for the fact that they're even still playing music at all, which most bands surely won't be doing. But they didn't need any of my charitable thoughts. Their playing was very tight, they sounded great with the backing musicians on stage, Keith Richards and Ron Wood kept together very well, and Mick was running around the stage like a teenager while I was thinking that my feet were starting to hurt.

They ended up playing for over hour and a half, maybe closer to two hours, and got in every single song I wanted to hear, including 'Ruby Tuesday', 'Sympathy for the Devil' and 'Paint it Black' which they played back-to-back and made it totally evil, with huge flames erupting from the lighting towers for the first 'Pleased to meet ya', don't forget my name', and also did a really nice job singing 'In the Nighttime' as a little tribute to Ray Charles.

They also played a few songs off of their latest album, which sound just like their familiar stuff, no great musical departure, to be sure, but still good rock'n'roll music. There was a group of French girls standing next to me who even seemed to know the words to 'Tough Justice'. I was impressed, they're not just a re-union band, to be sure.

While the light show was spectacular, and I was happy to get up to about 30m from the stage, I was not expecting it to actually be mobile, but at one point the lights all went out, and when they came back on, they had all moved to a side stage only about 10 meters from where I was standing. By sheer chance I ended up with one of the best views in the entire park. I don't know why more people didn't want to get up close, I guess it's just the festival crowd's way. I shouldn't complain. (Sadly, my camera wasn't co-operating with the spotlight and all my pictures of this part of the show are super-saturated) Seeing Charlie Watts from the side sitting at his drums made him look even more like just a regular old man while Mick and Keith hammed it up in front of him.

At the end the did a totally energetic performance of 'Brown Sugar', and pre-empted calls for a real encore by going off stage for about two minutes and then coming back on to play 'Satisfaction' before leaving in another storm of fireworks.

My dad knew all the classic Stones songs and he said he had a lot of fun, so it turned out to be a great idea to go together. He doesn't do many things that might lead to fun so when it happens it's definitely a good thing. Also getting to see a rock concert where he knew the songs and the band well enough that he wasn't in unfamiliar waters, not being one to listen to much rock music at all, was a total shot of good fortune.

Comments

[Stephen Downes]

I was at the show as well, and the review is generally accurate, though a little harsher and more cynical than I would have been.

Les Trois Accords, yes, spoke in French. Given that every other band spoke in English, it was the elast they could do. They played OK, though I got the impression they were a little overwhelmed by the size of the crowd (which would have been about 50,000 when they played - the eventual size of 80K was reached only for the Tragixcally Hip).

I lost track of who was who, and I don't really know the next three bands (I've heard of them, well, two of them, but I don't know their music). So they were fresh to me.

I thought Our Lady Peace were pretty good (I thought at the time they were some other unknown warm-up band, so they actually exceeded my expectations). Sure, the banter was lightweight, but the song 'Wipe That Smirk Off Your Face' itself was pretty good. When they finished I was left with the feeling that it would be worth buying one of their CDs - except I don't buy CDs any more because of DRM and lawsuits (maybe I'll scout out some MP3s).

Maroon 5 - who I have never even heard of before the show - was OK (Andrea liked them better than Our Lady Peace) but didn't really appeal to me. They also seemed out of their league at a show like this.

The Tragically Hip is one of those bands I've heard of but who's radio presence always seemed to be more pretension than substance. And I was pretty sure they wouldn't play the one song of their that I actually know (and they didn't, it being a bad time to refer to new Orleans).

Still. This was the first time I've seen Gord Downie perform and I was suitably impressed. You say it gets better? When Downie gets into one of his rants (yeah, they can only be called rants) there's an edge to his voice that reaches out and grab you. Where has all this music been all this time (as compared to the Tragically Hip pap they played on the radio)? Some throwaway tunes I recognized, but by far and away the best stuff was material that has probably never seen the sunny side of an AM dial (maybe it has, what would I know?).

Anyhow, my view on the Tragically Hip has changed, from 'pretentious Toronto media darlings' to 'band you have to get to know to appreciate'. I guess by any band's standards, that marks a successful show

The Stones were, well, the Stones. Probably their best bits were 'Sympathy for the Devil' and a dark rendition of 'Paint it Black'. I also gained a new appreciation for 'can't Always get What You Want', which seems re-engineeded be as relevant to today's protest movement as to the 60s movement to which it was originally addressed. I also really appreciated 'In the Nighttime', which could probably get good airplay if released now. Their newer songs were uninspired, but nonetheless left me with the impression that there is always the possibility of another 'Some Girls' in the band.

Yes, they played everything, they played a long show, and they put in a whole-hearted performance - you don't get the feeling that this is a band that is resting on its laurals. The music was very tight, the vocals crisp and clear and (which judicious help from the back-up singers) on key. There were pyrotechnics, but not a lot; the focus was tightly on the band and the music.

I watched the show from near light pillar twelve, which is about amile away from the stage. Consequently, the musicians themselves were about an eighth of an inch tall. But the screens were crisp and sharp, and except for an annoying lag (screen programmers should calculate for the speed of sound at such distances) were everything I could have wanted. Even at such distances the show was vivid and colourful and real-life.

The site was under-serviced for 80,000 people - if you tried to get food any time after 5:00 or so, you were in for more than an hour wait (when I got food at around 2:00 the service was brisk). Waits for the porta-potties were similarly bad, which meant you had to plan ahead (still, there was enough time for relief between The Hip and the Stones). The crowd was massive, but good natured and friendly.

The bus service was a nightmare, and after the show I learned that it takes 2 hours and 45 minutes to walk the 10.6 kilometers from the concert site at Magnetic Hill to my home near downtown Moncton.

Would I do it again? Yes.

Also posted at http://halfanhour.blogspot.com/ - I borrowed your photo while mine develop (I wasn't up to smuggling in my digital camera) - let me know if that's a problem, please.

[alexander o'neill]

OK, I edited the post to fix the mangled result of Blogger's spellcheck. (does typepad have spellcheck? I didn't even see a button for it..)

[alexander o'neill]

Cynical? Moi?

Hee.

Stephen, you're welcome to use the photos. They're on flicr under a 'Creative Commons Attribution Licence', so as long as my name and a linkback to the Flickr source page accompanies the photo feel free to go nuts :)

And yeah, the Hip live are definitely an experience that hearing their singles only hints at.

[Melissa]

I was there.
Thought Our Lady Peace rocked, but that is me. I'm listening to them now as a matter of fact.

The Hip--Love em. Third time seeing them in concert. They were good, but they are better at a smaller venue. I seen them in SJ in December and they blew me away.

[Jay]

Hey
I'm from fredericton, me and a bunch of friends travelled down for the concert. Stayed at one of the make shift campgrounds, that was super fun.
When i got to the concert trois Accord was still on stage. Likely i was still alittle drunk from a morning of drinking at the camp. I thought they were good, actually enjoyed them more than Maroon 5.
I thought Our Lady Peace did a great job. I'm not even a fan of their music but i thought they did a better job than Tragically hip (nothing against hip, i love em). Alot of people i talked to that were farther back said they couldn't understand anything the Hip were saying.
My friends and I used Maroon 5's set to go buy (highly over priced) t-shirts. Their guitarist had a good solo/tune up when they first came out, but that was pretty much all i enjoyed about them... besides the jokes we made about them.
By the time Tragically Hip came on we had pushed our way back up near the front. they played a good set. but like i said i thought OLP was alittle better, or atleast just as good. after the hip we had the pleasure of watching several kids past out and have to be hauled out, but it was ok, just made room for us to get closer.
Stones were amazing, played almost all the songs i wanted to hear. Loved, "Can't always get what you want", "Brown sugar", "sympathy for the devil", "tough justice" (side note: new cd is great). the ray tribute caught me totally off gaurd, i'm a huge ray fan. when the stage moved out to the center. we were very close. right before honky tonk women, ronnie stopped playing and threw his guitar pick at some lady on her husbands shoulders... it missed and hit me i snatched it up.
They proved that they could still rock out, and had tons of energy. I was very impressed. my only beef was they didn't play wild horses, we all thought they would finish with that. but still a great show. my friends and i have seen some big bands play. but this was by far the best show!