By George! (music)

Went to the concert on Saturday night with Steven, and both of us were so impressed that not only did we go on the Sunday night (including queueing for over an hour to get tickets), but I managed to drag my parents along as well.

Both the support acts were shockers though. The first was Hip Mo' Toast, with lead singer Libby Hammer. Despite their claims otherwise ('this is a dance number', 'this one's different', 'we don't just do jazz', 'here's some cha cha for you'), it was 80 minutes of rather boring lounge jazz. Kind of like the stuff you enjoy while eating at the Sheraton, but not at an open air concert. The second (on Sunday) was the Honeyriders, who sounded like Leonardo's Bride meets 4 Non Blondes - basically acoustic rock with some girl singing fairly tunelessly over the top in a husky voice. They were better than the jazz though.

Then George and WASO came on and it was all good. The setlist was as follows:

Intro by Dean Clairs of MIX 94.5 (lame badly-scripted puns, repeated in same order on Sunday night)

WASO conducted by Paul Mann - "Unchained Melody" by Graeme Koehne (not same tune as the one of 'Ghost' fame)

George onstage -
Bastard Son (w/intro)
Rain (with gratuitous references to George Bush and Tony Blair inserted for humorous effect by Tyrone)
Breaking It Slowly ("this is our first political song" - written about CEOs and the dollar-first mentality, but can also be directed to "what's going on in the world right now")
Special Ones (Katie's first appearance on vocals)
Breathe In Now (brilliant)
Release

- interval -

Jon Lord introduced on stage
"Concerto for Group and Orchestra"
George - Spawn (with orchestra and Lord)
George - Run (same)


All in all it was absolutely awesome. Tyrone's voice came across live quite like Jeff Buckley, and Katie's was awesome - particularly on Release, Breathe In Now and Spawn (which has become my fave song for 2003 thus far - even though it's a 2000 song :P )

If you haven't heard this band, you should. You probably will anyway - this band are too good to be limited to just one country.