Concert Reviews, Photos, Videos and Rock and Roll Stories from fans who love live music

One thing is to go to a concert to catch a great band. Another thing is to go to the show and get up close. Yet another is to go and get up close and get your hands on things. Like Bruce’s friggin’ guitar strings…  not just any guitar but none other than the Ash telecaster with the black pick guard!!! I don’t mean just brushing the strings! I seriously mean hitting the strings like Bam! Bam!  I got them huge!! This is the guitar that will some day be in the Smithsonian or the Rock Hall of Fame!!!  A big time highlight for me tonight!! This was 3^rd time I had the chance to touch the famous telecaster.

The VIP line up out front was fun but whatever reason there were far less people than the Magic tour. Maybe it was the back to back tours or the less than enthusiastic response to the new album, Working on a Dream. The house was sold out and tickets were selling on the street in the $250 range for a GA floor. At any rate the final wrist band handed out was number 676 (Magic tour the VIP line was @1200). The pit would take 350 tonight and that meant odds were better than 50 /50. Number 396 was drawn and 2 of the friends I went down with were in.  You know I wouldn’t be far behind.

We were up close and ready!!  Badlands and No Surrender back to back great openers!! The joint is hot!! Hot!! I mean temperature hot and for a Toronto crowd we are loud!! Could be one of the loudest ACC shows I’ve been too for awhile. Outlaw Pete and Working on a Dream book end She’s The One which is absolutely haunting. The new material sounds 300% better live especially Outlaw Pete.

At 6 feet away awesome!!  Johnny 99 is special man I just love this tune…still got some of that bare bones Nebraska feel. I guess if I had to say there was a rarity pulled out it would be E street shuffle. Probably just me and I know it has been out on this tour a couple times already but it was a nice gem for sure. I have seen a few Bruce shows since the River tour and really don’t recall having seen this one live. You know what I probably have but can’t recall.

Collecting the signs was fun to watch Bruce must picked up 35 and ended up playing Louie Louie. Lights way, way up and Waiting on a Sunny Day gets the house singing huge!  The Promise Land with Bruce shredding it up some with his guitar. What came next is a mesmerizing… Racing in the Streets.

I was seriously entranced it was that good!  All those hours upon hours on driving around blasting Darkness came flooding over me. Lights are down low now, only Bruce at the microphone under a single white spotlight.  You hit that place that makes you know why you love music so much! It is all just magical and you wish it could go on forever!  Bruce picks up a sign in the row front that has 2 headlights that are actually lit and places at the base of the microphone stand. I got all of Racing in Streets on video.

Of the last 5 main set tunes Lonesome Day and The Rising stick out. Kingdom of Days live is another example of how well the new material comes across live. I would have loved to hear the Wrestler as well. Can’t have it all I guess. I really have to say BTR and Radio Nowhere came and went far too quickly for me.  You what when Bruce does BTR he still seems to enjoy it a lot. Once in a while I see bands that blow through the older material and it seems like they don’t care to be even playing it. Anyway I lost a couple tunes somewhere. Like I don’t have the memory. I think maybe I was still blown so away by Racing in The Streets.  Darkness on the Edge of Town is now on heavy rotation!!

I have to say I have some great video. At one point Bruce comes over to my camera and points in the lens and yells “You”! all the while I am videoing. Got to love that!  Hitting the tele twice tonight was amazing and I also had Little Steven put a pick in my hand and take it back saying No! No! then he gave it to a girl beside me! I ended up with another pick though from Nils!! I have a bit of Steven fishing in his pocket for a pick.

I grabbed the entire food share information lead in to Hard Times at the start of encore and most of Rosalita from near end. 10^th Ave got the big man blown as usual. Like in the band intro as Bruce says the biggest man you ever seen!!! This as always is a really fun show.

This band…They tire you out and you wonder how a guy who is 60 years old can do 2 sometimes 3 nights in a row! Then the next day creeps in and man you get that “I’d love to that again feeling!!” and sometimes when there are multiple dates close by you can.

Our live video streaming of a few songs got 4500 views while we were inside the show. Here is Glory Days from our iphone stream.

This was Glory Days to finish us off.. and one more touch of the strings

Below here are a photo of a lyrics sheet and guitar pic handed to us at the end of show

This show also inspired us to dig into the archives and pull out a couple of photos from the Born In The USA Tour from 1984 at the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium.

For more photos from this show visit out Flickr Photo Page.

Leave us a comment about the show below!

Friday Nov. 7th presented the practicing concertaholic  2 big choices of either the sonic boom of AC/DC at the Rogers Centre with 44,999 other delirious fans or Daniel Lanois at a tiny obscure venue 1.5 hours south west of Toronto that seats about 300. It really wasn’t too hard a choice for me. I will take the opportunity to witness musical genius over a stadium blast anytime. (fortunately both bands are playing again very soon in Toronto and on different days)

The venue for Daniel Lanois had been moved at the last minute from the Old Roxy Theatre in Mount Forest Ontario to an even smaller, positively more obscure venue because of construction outside the Roxy. I guess the last minute change and possibly the steady downpour threw some people off because there were maybe only 150 people present in this hundred and something year old building. I had a nice 6^th row seat anyway but I couldn’t help myself and moved up to the 3^rd row centre when I realized the show about to begin and the entire row was still empty.

Lanois rolls right into The Messenger. He is wearing black leather jacket, black t shirt, black ball cap, his black hair all grown out and sporting a black bushy beard. The dark feel and look is contrasted sharply and amazing well by his 1956 Goldtop Gibson. The lighting is very subdued, everything is subdued and it fits. The theatre is small with the sloping floor, arched ceiling, small balcony and plush red velour seats that really help out the acoustics in these small older theatres. The acoustics are excellent. We are all at the sound board seat. The back drop is a small to medium sized screen that has the band projected on to it in black and white. It is continuous live shot as there is video camera guy moving about.

The music is so “take me away time” The Maker…. Still Water … Danny always a story teller talks a bit about the Grand River and his friends / compadres on the reserve while rolling out this tune.

He is playing with a nice tight band which he kindly intros. This is a pretty bare bones set up. He is using a couple of microphones and the main one looks like a vintage microphone.  He does some heavy tunes with the full band and does a really nice solo set. We get Jolie Louise, Rocky World, Under The Stormy Sky like Bang! Bang! Bang! All played in the solo set.  Highlights for me are probably the opening few songs, the solo set and the songs Fire and Slow Giving. Yes, basically the whole show.

I love the stories. Before he does a tune on his pedal steel he tells the crowd he has a soft spot for the country sound and continues sharing a story about street playing in Toronto near several different bars and mentions going into one watching a musician playing a pedal steel. He told the musician he wanted to learn how to play the pedal steel.  At another juncture he talks about riding his motorcycle through these dusty concession roads and the hidden beauty of these places. He mentioned the theatre in particular. I recall at another point him talking about the perfect egg. Fry the egg don’t cook the yok and place on a slice of bread with butter. He followed this by welcoming everyone to the Lanois cooking show.

It really felt like there were only 11 people here.  He had a conversation with a couple he knew from the area from the stage that went on for a few minutes, it kind of talking back and forth and the crowd was so small neither him or the couple had to talk very loud to hear each other.

Luckily enough I hung around after the show to get a good look at the Gibson Goldtop and to see if I could score a setlist. Danny came out pretty much right away and was talking to a few people that were waiting for him. There were maybe 7 of us at this point. I asked him if I could get a picture with him and if I could get the inner sleeve of my Acadie CD signed. He happily said no problem to both. Unfortunately the picture came out a little blurry but you can still make out who it is.

The only thing I really missed was some of the pushing, feedback laden, futuristic, cutting edge, stretching it out there, awesome sounding guitar work I caught doing a couple of years at The Great Hall on Queen St. Toronto and Hamilton Place Theatre. He just really kept that to a very bare minimum. Ah! I can only hope for Steamdog at Massey Hall this coming Friday Nov. 14th.

The entire set was kind of short but the combination of a tiny crowd, a great obscure venue and the magic of Daniel Lanois both musically and storytelling- wise, made this a very satisfying trip for a concertaholic like me.

Todd

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….I had been oscillating between going and not going to this show right up to the last minute for no other reason then I wasn’t feeling so hot. Needless to say I ended going and after a couple of songs I knew I had made a wise decision.

This show kind of felt like “An Evening with” and a little bit “story-teller” like.  Lindsay Buckingham hit the boards somewhere around 8:30PM and did 2 songs right off the bat from his new album Gift of Screws. I had never been a Lindsey Buckingham fan. I had never really not, been a fan. I just never really paid much attention. Last night all that changed! 2 songs into the show I was mesmerized by his style of guitar playing. This guy is a master at picking. I think throughout the whole show he may have used a guitar pick on 2 songs. The third song in is an older solo tune called Trouble. Even if I hadn’t been paying much attention to his solo material I knew the song and it had me thinking Oh! Yeah! This is a really good song!

Lindsey is touring with some excellent seasoned musicians that really accent his playing and they harmonize perfectly with his vocals. The harmonizing had me thinking of bands like the Eagles, Poco and even a little CSN to name a few.

You would have had to be in coma through the mid to late seventies and early eighties not to have been aware of Lindsey Buckingham’s contribution to Fleetwood Mac, having written some of the most recognizable songs from this or any era. Not to mention being a lot of the genius behind one of the best selling albums of all time. Just amazing stuff when you think about it!!

The first Fleetwood Mac song we get is Tusk. This is definitely the longer album version of the song, not the radio shortened one I had heard so much. The sound is so good in this great old theatre. I have to say the equipment is state of the art all around. The clarity of music is amazing. The custom guitars are a show in themselves. He relied on 3 main axes, all of which are beautiful custom pieces.

This rolled us into a solo acoustic set that was quite beautiful by every measure. The highlight by far for me was the Fleetwood Mac song Never Going Back Again. He brought the vocal down to whisper and I swear you could have heard a pin drop, the place was that quiet! What a respectful response from this crowd!

Let the story telling begin. Lindsey rolls out Big Love with a story of how he really was not looking for love as much as looking out for love as he gestures a pushing away motion with his hand. He explains this was just before he walked away from “the insanity” that was going on all around Fleetwood Mac. He said there were just so many people ignoring the responsibility of spouses and family he had to get away from it. He went on to talk a bit about his 11 year married relationship and his 3 children.

The set was easily 21+ songs. I tried to get a setlist but the setlists were laminated so the tech told me “no way” and “this is mine”. This tells me by this point in the tour the songs are pretty much etched in stone and there isn’t much deviation from start to finish. I did manage to score a guitar pick and the coolest thing about it is the pick has a dark guitar with the do not use symbol over top. The inside joke I guess is a laugh at not using a pick for the most of the shows.

Before rolling out the title track Gift of Screws Lindsey went on to explain that the meaning of the album and song title was taken from an Emily Dickinson poem. The meaning isn’t as crude as it may sound as Lindsey put it, rather it refers to a flower press (like a wine press I guess) to extract oils etc.

More of the story-teller feeling was conveyed when Lindsey explained how he felt writing and playing solo material. He continued telling us about the difference in support an artist receives when rolling out material for a “brand” name such as Fleetwood Mac as apposed to doing his solo material. Although he did say he was pleasantly surprised from the reaction Warner Brothers Records gave him regarding his new album. They had even picked a single out for release and he made us laugh when he smirked and said “what’s that” in reference to hearing a single had been picked. I guess since the Mac days he hadn’t needed to worry about the “machine” choosing singles for him. The single he referred to is the song Do You Miss Me, which he promptly played.

A lot of the last 2 albums got an airing as did a couple more Fleetwood Mac tunes.  Of the Fleetwood Mac tunes, Go Your Own Way was a killer! As the song kicked in a lot of the crowd just kind of oozed down the aisles to stand at the stage front where Lindsey began letting a bunch of fans slap the strings on his guitar. I love this kind of stuff!!

All in all it was a really good show and by far highlights for me were the exposure to Lindsey Buckingham’s awesome style of picking / playing coupled with his unique singing voice, the harmonizing, the story telling, hearing the Fleetwood Mac material live and his custom guitars.

SETLIST FOR DANFORTH MUSIC HALL FOR OCTOBER 8, 2008

Main set:

Great Day / Love Runs Deeper / Trouble / Go Insane / Tusk / I Know I’m Not Wrong / Gift of Screws / Never Going Back Again / Big Love / Shut Us Down / Under the Skin / It Was You / Did You Miss Me / Come / World Turning / I’m So Afraid / Go Your Own Way

Encore:

Second Hand News / Don’t Look Down / Treason

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Lindsey Buckingham Photos on Our Flickr Page

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