I just got back a few minutes ago from Chicago where I saw David's Wednesday night show. It was incredible.
The new album worked very well live. I was blown away by it (I particularly love The Blue and Where We Start).The band was incredibly tight and David's voice was in fine shape. It translated very well into the live setting. My friend that I went with, who hadn't heard OAI, was somewhat underwhelmed; she enjoyed it, but said she thought it was too laid back (which, interestingly, is one of the reasons I like it a lot). I thoughtfully suggested she give it a second chance. We both noted with some amusement, being former high school band geeks, that David puffs out his cheeks when playing sax, which generally is a no-no but looked really funny. Since he evidently plays well like that, I can't really gripe. Comically, David dropped the slide for his lap steel on the ground during (I think) Then I Close My Eyes and gave a comical look of mock panic as he had to walk all the way around the instrument to retrieve it, missing several bars of the solo but picking up again flawlessly. Rick appeared to be very amused by all of this.
The Floyd set was amazing. Shine On was a combination of the version from the Meltdown concert and the proper version, and it worked really well. I was glad to see David digging deeper into the Floyd catalogue for things like Fat Old Sun and Wots...Uh The Deal (the former was ended with an incredible jam over the fade out solo) rather than strictly play the obligatory Floyd standards; I'm willing to wager that Money, Run Like Hell, ABITW2, etc., don't appear at all during this tour. Rick's presence was an excellent reason to play Wearing The Inside Out, which sounded a bit more bluesy than the original. Rick's voice was in great form, while David, Guy, and Phil provided the backing vocal. Breathe and Time represented Dark Side and most of the audience who had remained seated up to that point were suddenly on their feet (as I noted to my friend later, there are, after all, probably only about six people globally that don't own the album). High Hopes was excellent, and I think probably was better than the Meltdown version (amazing how the presence of Rick Wright can do that). But the highlight of the show clearly was Echoes. Honestly, from things said by the band in recent years, I had never expected to hear this song again. A soon as that initial "ping" went off, it was all over for me. David and Rick played off of each other so well, it's tough to believe this song has barely reared its head since the seventies. All 23 minutes of it were absolutely blissful. WYWH was very intimate, and being my friend's favorite song, was the one she most went nuts over. I'm a Comfortably Numb man, myself. CN is probably my favorite Floyd song, and it was very emotional for me to finally, at long last, see it live by its originators. I was still a bit too young when the DB tour was going around (that awkward age when you want to start going to concerts but really are too young to go). It absolutely pulverized me. I couldn't sing or anything else for that matter. By the time the solo hit, I just got incredibly caught up in it, standing for brief priods with my eyes closed and a huge idiotic-looking grin on my face that you couldn't have wiped off with a belt sander. Corny though it sounds, it really was something I'll never forget.
Did anyone else here go to this one? I'd love to hear some other people's opinions.
(And in case anyone's curious, contrary to the title of this post, I didn't fly there. I just can't resist a bad joke.)
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