Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Sadly there was no Jane...
...but it was still a great concert. As you can see from the picture I was very close (only one person standing in front of me).
We had to wait outside in the rain for 30 minutes until they opened the doors but as usual with House of Blues’ shows it moved on time. Fastball took the stage at 8:00pm and plays a very good 30+ minute set. I was standing with a couple of groups: 2 gay men and 3 girls and we were all trying to figure out who Fastball was. We remember them but could not remember their 1 or 2 hits. A few songs in they played Out of My Head and we all went "there’s the hit." I was pretty excited since that is the song played in the great, original trailer for Wonder Boys. Later they played The Way and we were wondering how we could forget the song we couldn’t forget in 1998.
I have to mention, people are assholes. I saw this at Joss Stone but this time it was in from of me. If you are not humping the ass of the person in front of you and leave any courtesy space some jerk is going to squeeze in front of you after the opening act. Two bitches tried just that but the six of us yelled at them enough to where the completely left our area.
A little after 9, Kathy and Charlotte came out to make the sad announcement that Jane left the tour 2 days ago to be with her dying mother. She was replaced by Austin musician, Eve Monsees, who did a very good job but, while I’m sad for Jane, I really wanted to see the S&M goddess.
As you see from the photo, I picked the left side of the stage and spent the entire evening in front of the still very hot Belinda & Charlotte. They played every one of their hits in a show that ran just under an hour and a half. They seemed to have fun with the audience. They mentioned with Jane not being there they had more time to talk between songs since she gabs the whole time. Charlotte asked about Dallas weather. They arrived at noon it was hot, then it went from rainy, windy, humid and cold. Kathy bounced around the stage with a wireless base and Gina came out from behind the drum set to talk and survey the crowd before and after the encore.
All the songs were great with The Whole World Lost Its Head being fun as they threw updated lyrics into the crowd and we sang with them to lines such as "the idiot became the president, Britney goes crazy daily, the rich twins dress like homeless people." The big question we had between acts is would they do Belinda’s solo stuff? And yes, Mad About You was a crowd favorite. After a very brief break, the encore opened with a long, rocking version of my favorite Head Over Heels. The finale was the Shangri-Las’ song Remember (Walking in the Sand) that really showed off Belinda’s vocal range. A great end to a very fun concert.
# posted by ChrisR @ 11:00 PM 
