Вторник 1 Май 2007, 23:37

Tue 1 May – Dave Matthews Band, Xavier Rudd

Opening first with Xavier Rudd, who is an *extremely* accomplished musician, the gig got off to a great start with some very sedate moshers swaying to his beat. I've never seen him live before though I've often heard how good he is, but I wasn't quite prepared for his awesome ability to keep track of several different musical threads in real time (i.e. bass drum, didge, and guitar).

He played through a lot of the old favourites as well as some of the songs from his new album, which, shockingly, involves another drummer! One of them was a very groovy reggae type track which I really liked the sound of.

After he finished DMB came on stage, and they were everything I imagined, and then some! They did a Neil Young cover which really got us wild, a lot of their steamier funk-driven tracks such as Crash and When the World Ends, and a lot of their old standards: Too Much, Jimi Thing, etc.

They 'finished' with Ants Marching, the track I'd been waiting all night to hear, and it blew us away. So much so that Melbourne refused to let them go, chanting and clapping until Dave came back on stage and did a new song called 'Sister', and then with the rest of the band a few more solid items (I think one was Stay).

Interesting tidbits:

The guy who plays trumpet also played a bass trumpet and something that might have been a flugel horn. He had some seriously good chops and was really holding his own in the solos he had with the sax player. I was surprised how much of a role he had to play in the band - though I do listen almost exclusively to their the Central Park Concert CDs so probably missed hearing him properly in the other ones which I do have.

He also is the one who sings with Dave in Stay (Wasting Time).

I thought I'd traveled pretty far to hear them, but there was someone next to me from Cairns, of all places.

Xavier Rudd uses pre-recorded sound in live gigs! If this isn't cause for the type of out-cry that landed Holly Valance in hot water I don't know what is ;)