No photos again! I bought my camera this time, but it poked itself and I couldn't diagnose the problem in the dark theatre.
I won't post a detailed review of this one, for two reasons. First I don't actually own any albums by this guy, even (I'm ashamed to admit) any Dire Straits albums, so I could only put names to less than half of the songs. What I can say is that he played pretty much everything that a casual fan such as myself would expect. Secondly, I arrived late! I think I missed about half an hour. Luckily he began with mostly new stuff, so I didn't miss anything I'd really be kicking myself about.
It did kind of fuck me off though. I've never been to a rock concert before when the main act started within half an hour of the time on the ticket. Then again, I've never been to a rock concert before where the security guards were polite and friendly, everyone stayed seated for the whole show, and I didn't get patted down before I was let in the door.
A few notes:
First, drunk old people at rock concerts are scary. If you ever see me standing up out of my seat when I'm 50 to do some strange little dance thing and clap out of time, you have my permission to shoot me dead, because I'd obviously be in some kind of vegetative state.
The sound was amazing. Maybe I'm just used to heavy metal concerts where it sounds like the band is playing in a washing machine at the bottom of the ocean, but I thought the sound setup was phenomenally clear. You could really hear every note by everyone onstage.
Mark didn't talk much to the audience, but when he did he was very relaxed and friendly. Before he played the song 'Donny's Gone' he told a story about how Lonnie Donegan (I've no idea who he is) was his favorite musician when he was six, and that was when he started on the path to become a musician. I felt like jumping out of my seat and yelling "Mark! You were my favorite musician when I was six!" but I didn't want to make him feel old.
Everyone in the band was a very impressive musician, and they pulled out a few unusual instruments, like the accordion and the bazouki (a Greek stringed instrument a bit like a lute). I don't know if Mark literally played a different guitar for every song like I've read he does, but he certainly had at least half a dozen. If I was a bit more of a guitar geek I could probably talk about the different models he used, but I'm not.
So as for the set itself, I arrived during 'Romeo and Juliet', and by the time I sat down he was just going into 'Sultans of Swing', reworked with extra time for wank solos. It was an excellent chance for him to show off his technical guitar playing prowess, and I hung on every note.
After that he went through a few lesser known songs, before finishing the main set with an awesome rendition of 'The Telegraph Pole'. This is a bit of a special song for me, since I used to love it when I was a wee kid, and according to my parents I'd run around and round in circles listening to it over and over. I used to call it Tickman because of the solitary percussive beat going through the quiet patches, hence the title of the post. It's a real long epic song which moves between quiet sad parts to huge bombastic ones, and they really pulled it all out for this performance. It was exactly what I wanted to hear, and by the time they reached the climax of the song, which included some awesome guitar and piano parts, and more hard out drumming than a classic rock band has any right to, I was almost ready to jump up and start screaming with the middle aged women. Almost.
For the first encore he pulled out the huge crowd pleasers 'Brothers in Arms' and 'Money for Nothing'. The former was good, but I felt it was a little overworked. It's a song that benefits from a 'less is more' approach. I might be misremembering, but I think they cut out that cool drum solo at the intro of 'Money for Nothing', what were they thinking? They made up for it with an extended outro though. I was surprised how many people got up to leave before the encore. Did they think he just forgot to play his most popular songs?
The second encore began with 'So Far Away' a nice sad one, and ended with a pair of instrumental songs, that I recognised but couldn't name.
A very cool concert, Dire Straits gets moved way up the 'to buy' list!
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