Auckland Set List

My Auckland Ramblings….

With only a third of the Auckland Town Hall seats occupied, local band ‘The Bads’ started a very small acoustic set (they should’ve had a couple more songs I think), they were good, enjoyable and an nice lead in for the noise and raw power of Buick 6. I got much more than I expected from the Buick 6 instrumental lead in, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. They definitely set the scene for a more ‘rock’ sound than I think some people were expecting. A small talk, delivered with a little dry humour, from Butch near the end of the set, let those who didn’t know find out who they had just been listening to.

Seats had slowly been filling during the 2 opening acts, and by the end of the Buick 6 set, the venue was probably two thirds full. This pisses me off – it was an hour after the ‘official’ start time and a third of the people hadn’t arrived??? Lucky for them (but a little bit annoying) was the half hour wait before the band returned with Lu. By the time Lu got on stage there were hardly any spare seats. The band had changed clothes, and there was our girl all dressed in black…..

So what did I think? From my perspective if was absolutely-effing-fantastic! It was very loud, at times the band was too loud, but I think they played it like a rock concert which you had to go with. The loud allowed me to sing out to my hearts content without annoying the people sitting next to me (I hope 😉 ). The loud made you feel the music – but that’s what turned me on to her music in the first place, she sings directly to my soul, I should feel the music!

Hubby and I were making lots of noise – lots of whooping and hollering from our end. The crowd were mostly right into it. All tickets were seated, no GA, and bugger all room between the first row and the stage. (We were up in the circle – but we had a great view, and there is nothing wrong with chair-dancing!). Lu told us right at the beginning, as it was the last show of the tour, they were intending to have a good time, and give us a good show. From my completely uninformed opinion, she seemed really relaxed and appeared to be having a very good time. She was dancing around quite a bit, talked a lot more than I expected.

Right from the beginning a few people stood in front of the stage and danced – by the third song, there were about 30 people up there and then the ushers started getting anxious, and started herding all the standing people to the side. But along all the walls and in spare spaces there were quite a lot of people dancing, which of course Lu loved. She commented a few times about how much she appreciated it, and that it was the first time on the tour that the audience had responded like that.Of course there were plenty of people who just did not appear to be enjoying themselves – we paid $NZ93 (~$US56) for our tickets down here, at that kind of money you want to be having a good time!

We’ve only been listening to Lu for about 3 years, and have exposed ourselves to as much of her music as we can find. I’m so glad I got the chance to see her live, to hear her and to earn the memory. She said she’d be back – she bloody well better be! 😀

Thanks so much for these perspectives: it would seem that anxious ushers and a certain segment of the “fan” base determined not to enjoy Lu shows are trans-world phenomena. I couldn’t resist ripping in to the blogger from the Wellington show (see comments after the blog “review”) in that other thread of this Forum, but apparently my comments were too subtle after all. Anyway, helpful insights here: one shocker is that “Out of Touch” was done with only Chet. Guess Lu has decided it’s not quite the transition-to-the-rockers live song after all, and this clarifies an earlier blog/review which grouped the song with the mellow ones. Maybe she’s gone back to the spirit of the Morlix Car Wheels mix on that one… Hopefully, Lucinda won’t wait another decade and a half to return to your shores.