Sir Elton John

Well, I went to see Elton John last night.

The tickets were so expensive I am embarrassed to say how much I spent and that was for the nose bleed seats. The good seats were double what I paid. Even in NZD this was still alot. The concert was pretty cool and was on May 14th, 2008 at Vector Arena in Auckland, New Zealand. There was no opening act, which in my opinion is always a good thing. Also he played for about 3 hours which is awesome.

He was very modest and friendly and kept thanking various parts of the audience after each song. He also stopped to sign about 70 autographs before his encore which I thought was cool.

The crowd was pretty old and mellow during most of the show, but people started to get up and dance towards the end of his set.

His set started off kind of wonky with a lot of slow whiny songs and a few old slow songs. Then in the middle there were these 10 minute jazz jams made out of every song which started getting annoying. Most of his songs are cool pop ditties that are over in 3 minutes and leave you wanting more and hearing a 10 minute version that builds and wanes and builds again gets annoying after a while. I think he could have mixed it up a bit more and played the crowd a bit more as well. It is hard to work the crowd when you have to sit down to talk in your piano mounted microphone... maybe he should have worn a headset too.

The piano playing was awesome! The music was awesome, and had some really interesting guitars (including a banjo for one song). All the "traditional" instruments like strings and brass were from a synthesizer and weren't that good. It would have been awesome to have one more band member playing various instruments during different songs. The drummer was the original drummer and for an old guy, kicked ass.

Here's a few songs I remember from the play list:
Tiny Dancer (awesome)
Levon (Awesome)
Daniel (awesome - hi Clare!)
Bitch is back
Sorry is the hardest word
Crocodile Rock
I'm Still Standing
Saturday nights alright for fighting
Candle in the wind
Someone saved my life tonight
Honkey Cat
Rocket Man
Benny and the Jets
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
I guess that's why they call it the blues
Take me to the Pilot
Pinball Wizard

Encore---
Don't Let the Sun go Down on Me
Your Song

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One song I wanted to hear was "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" but he didn't have a female duet for it. Also I remember a few 80s songs "Nikita" and Sad Songs Say So Much which he didn't play. I think he played most of his hits other than those though.

All in all a good show, a chance to see a legend play, some great piano work and some awesome pop music!

Cheers,

Matthew

Wellington

Hey all,

Just got back from a solo trip down to Wellington for the weekend to just have some fun.
I flew down Friday and had a Reiki treatment. I then saw "Across the Universe" movie at the Embassy theater (that's where they premiered the Lord of the Rings movies... beautiful old theater). I think
I sat in a seat where one of the hobbits sat for the premiere as each seat still has name plates.

I met a woman that lives here with her family via another friend that came out to visit and we have kept in touch a bit. She was nice enough to invite me to stay over at their house and I took her and her 7 year old son to see the Hurricanes play Australia in rugby. It rained cats and dogs, but we all had a blast! She works for Telecom here and they had an office party before the game based on an Austrian theme. Had tons of food and games and stuff. A lot of fun and good to see some people with Team Spirit!

On Saturday I saw two fringe plays and saw another friends Gypsy band play live. That was awesome. He is also in a Ska band which I saw on Sunday morning at the TePaPa museum. I also got to go one of my favorite restaurants "Sweet Mothers" which is a New Orleans style southern restaurant!

Sunday I mostly hung out with some other friends I met via Runi (Nikkie and Frankie) and we had Malaysian for lunch and wandered around Cuba street for a bit and went to a friend of theirs place for tea. Sunday night I found a place called the Malt House which has about 40 different beers and has some really good selection, although nothing from America. I talked beer with the manager for a while and tried a few new ales out, then saw a comedy at the cinema. Also got in a few workouts at the hotel gym over the weekend and lots of walking so all in a great time other than crappy weather.

Cheers,

Matthew