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Tour Reports 2010

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chrismiller
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Re: Tour Reports 2010

Post by chrismiller »

Hey everyone,

Well, after a long absence of mine I'm back here to review CR's Budapest gig.

So, the date is 4th February, Thursday, the venue is Budapest Sport Arena transformed into a capacity of 4,000 - only seating places. The show is sold out.

Paul Casey started the evening at 19:40, alone on stage with a single acoustic guitar. He played four songs in a very enjoyable manner, his performance lasted until 20:10.

After a short break, at 20:20 the lights went out and the black curtain hanging in the background fell down, revealing the three huge blue guitars hanging in the front of the cover painting of Blue Guitars. Chris and his band, Robert Ahwai, Martin Ditcham, Sylvin Marc and Neil Drinkwater, supported by Paul Casey walked onto stage and as they started I Can't Wait For Love, some another neon-green guitar shapes sparkled on up in the air; very similar to 2008's set decoration. During the gig the paintings changed continuously depending on the songs' atmosphere.

CR, wearing his trademark Jazzee Blue vest, was a bit unsure with his vocals in the first two tracks but found his tones for Where The Blues Come From which was directly linked at the end to Josephine. Chris and Neil Drinkwater did great solos one after the other in this two.
In Easy Rider, supported by his sparkling blue Maranello, CR played amazing slide guitar with a lot of glass notes; many times pulling the slide right until his picking hand.
Then he changed to Fender Thinline for the great, emotional intro of Til The Morning, just like he did four years ago.
Next song Looking For The Summer was a bit radio-like to me. Julia was played in a totally new version once again, closer to the 2008 version than the arpeggio one of the Farewell tour. It was rougher and longer with vocal improvisation by Chris and some keyboard solo in the end.
Stony Road, well, it's the fifth live version of the song I've heard and I can tell you this was the best version ever! Lasted for almost ten minutes CR did an awesome job with the solos... after singing "Let's go dancin'..." he indeed went on dancing down with the Maranello - in fact, the best version ever.
I really missed I Can Hear Your Heartbeat from the set list but later happily discovered that the live version of Electric Guitar was mainly built on the foundations of that song; great version, very-very different from the album version.
Come So Far... one of the highlights of the night. Martin did a very aggressive job on drums, playing the fours on the lower toms so our seats were trembling all through the song. CR sang his heart out in this one, you could see on him that he really meant it was still so far to go... his performance was absolutely cathartic for me.
Following the title track, Highway 61 & 49 ruled the stage with breathtaking solos at the end... Chris started, Drinkwater continued, then Chris once again. I have to tell you, I always preferred Paul Hirsch on keyboard and wasn't carried away by enthusiasm with Drinkwater's keyboards in 2008, but while listening to that solo I bowed down and took my hat off to Mr. Drinkwater.
I was very happy that Sylvin's in the band once again, I always thought he could give a bit of a push to CR while they're together on stage. It happened so this time as well, when they fooled around and danced a lot together in Stainsby Girls (which is one of my all-time favorites and this year's version was even more awesome than before, played on Pinky that was tuned in a more richer and louder way than usual).
The last track before the encores was, of course, The Road To Hell. The whole stage went black while the solitary red-light lamp descended slowly, illuminating only CR soloing with his sparkling red Maranello. The solos were tremendous once again, completely made the hair on my back stand up.
Two encore songs came after a minute of break; On The Beach with a great, very Dire Straits-like solo from Robert then the band closed the evening with Let's Dance. Chris played on Bluey, danced a lot and made the audience sing the line "Never - never too old to dance". The six left the stage waving goodbye in a neverending round of applause and cheering.

CR used six guitars on stage: Italia Maranello sparkling blue, Italia Maranello sparkling red, Pinky, Bluey, Telecaster Thinline and a custom sunburst Stratocaster equipped with humbucker pickups. He used this last one for rougher tones e.g. in Julia or Josephine.

Regarding the solos, Chris and Neil Drinkwater bear the brunt of them, Robert did only one solo in On The Beach. In the rhythm section Sylvin, as I've written above, did a great job once again; and Martin was amazing on his drums, making the foundations of the house shake. Only Paul Casey was a bit unnoticeable, playing some rhythm on two Strats and doing some backing vocals in Come So Far and Let's Dance. Though his presence was quite useful, since CR didn't have to take care of playing rhythm guitar so he could pay much more attention for the solos than in the previous years.
Sound engineering had a few problems, CR's guitar went excited sometimes, especially in the roughest solos and Chris had a bit of a disagreement in Come So Far when he had to wave intensively, indicating he wants Sylvin's and Paul's microphones louder instead of his guitar.

Well, enough saying, you can find some great videos on YouTube; Stony Road is highly advised! The tracklist is the very same you can find here.

In fact, make ready because this will be a VERY LOUD Chris Rea concert :)

All the best,
Chris

ps. Somebody please record Come So Far live :)
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Re: Tour Reports 2010

Post by Mr_Blues »

chrismiller wrote:Hey everyone,
Well, after a long absence of mine I'm back here to review CR's Budapest gig.
Good writing, you can sure hold the pen in your hand, or should I say computer keyboard :)
Too many good words to add here.
I better just sit back and drink beer. :)
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Re: Tour Reports 2010

Post by HiredGun »

They keep coming..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tG1tj6Ti_xM : "Till the morning" Belgrade 2010 (very nice)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLUfAWDGrTA : "Till the morning" Prague 2010
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Re: Tour Reports 2010

Post by Chris »

I wish all concert reviews would have been written the same or similar way.
Thank you Chris for sharing your impressions after this great event in Budapest.
All the best to you,
Chris
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lilybee
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Re: Tour Reports 2010

Post by lilybee »

Excellent review Chris Miller! Thanks.

Good to see you back...:-)

Lily
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Re: Tour Reports 2010

Post by tobi777 »

Excellent review, Chris! Thank you very much! Somebody please record "Electric Guitar" and "Still So Far..." - these versions were just marvellous!!! By the way, did you notice Chris played the riff of "Alright Now" by Free during the impro-part of "Stainsby Girls"?
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Re: Tour Reports 2010

Post by blueskev »

Great review Chris, thank you very much.
Regards,
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Re: Tour Reports 2010

Post by HiredGun »

Last edited by HiredGun on 09 Feb 2010, 13:27, edited 6 times in total.
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And leave behind the springtime days
Go looking for the summer..."
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chrismiller
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Re: Tour Reports 2010

Post by chrismiller »

Thank you everyone! :)
It's good to see you all back as well.
tobi777 wrote:By the way, did you notice Chris played the riff of "Alright Now" by Free during the impro-part of "Stainsby Girls"?
Thank you Tobi, mystery's solved to me :) I was wondering about it but couldn't have named which song's in there.
This kind of hommage is quite new to me regarding CR and so it's the third one we noticed: "Heartbeat" in "Electric Guitar, "Alright Now" in "Stainsby Girl" and the Mark Knopfler-thing in "On the Beach".
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Re: Tour Reports 2010

Post by Bart »

Hello HiredGun;

Thanks for al your videos, but please post them in one post by editing one of your previous posts (instead of creating a new post for 1 or 2 new videos) or send them to me, so I can add them here. Thanks...
REAgards, Bart (webmaster)
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Re: Tour Reports 2010

Post by tsipouras »

Just Returned from the Belgrade gig.

The concert was amazing. The band is tight and even though the very first seats were far from the stage, the atmosphere was unique. The setlist was the same, but the people were really enthousiastic during the whole concert, and by the last song (let's dance) everyone was up and dancing. :D
I didn't have the chance to see Chris when he toured in 2008, so I enjoyed the show a lot! Blue guitars all over the stage and cool lighting. His playing is getting better over time. The slide guitar solos he plays are something else. He didn't play the banjo on 'Josephine' this time, and 'Julia' was more electric as you have already noted! :wink:

Highlights of the show were 'Still so far to go' (wow this rocks live!), 'Stoney Road', 'Till The Morning Sun Shines', 'Looking for the Summer' and of course 'Let's dance'.

The only strange thing :idea: was the setting of the venue as I mentioned, because the first seats had a significant distance from the stage, and there was a strict non-standing policy even on 'let's dance'. However,that didn't stop everyone from having a blast. :D :D

Can't wait for the new album and the next tour! :D I'm curious of the direction Chris's music will take. Will it be blues again or a new musical experiment?


Here is a video I managed to take , I hope you enjoy it!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vd72RpJ-l78 (Looking for the summer)
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Re: Tour Reports 2010

Post by realistic »

I'm sure the gigs are excellent and a must for each Chris Rea Fan. On the other hand I'm very disappointed that the Tour 2010 was officially announced as a "Very Best Of/ Greatest Hits" Tour including "I Can hear your heartbeat" etc, which is not on the setlist. What is the difference between the last tour 2008 and the current one? The most songs are from his Blues Albums and the few old songs are the same he performed the last years. This has nothing to do with "Very Best Of". People who buy tickets to hear the classic songs and missed the last concerts due to the Blues songs will be dissapointed. No offense...I like Chris Rea and loved the gigs in 2006 and 2008 and I' sure I like the new one but I wished he would perform a totaly different setlist this year. I also don't understand wy he leaves the stage after Let's Dance. In 2006 he came back and performed Fool and Moon River and everybody left the show with a smile. He could do some less gigs but one or two songs more to make the show perfect.
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Re: Tour Reports 2010

Post by BlueMaranello »

HiredGun wrote:New vids..

On the beach, Bucharest 2010

Where the blues comes from, Bucharest 2010
(Great video!!!!!)

Edit webmaster: merged posts
Both links are for On The Beach :?
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HiredGun
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Re: Tour Reports 2010

Post by HiredGun »

Sorry about that. I changed the link..

HiredGun
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And leave behind the springtime days
Go looking for the summer..."
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chrismiller
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Re: Tour Reports 2010

Post by chrismiller »

realistic wrote: In 2006 he came back and performed Fool and Moon River and everybody left the show with a smile.
Hey everyone,

Well, there's something I wanted to share a long time ago but I was so unsure with my memories I didn't dare.
It was in 2006 in the Farewell Tour, when CR did two encores in Budapest, but as I've said above I was very unsure about it since that was my first Chris Rea concert ever so I got a whole lot of new impressions. Plus I've never heard that very last song before, nobody talked about it on this site and wherever I looked for, couldn't find that. Finally I got to the funny conclusion that that was 'Til the Morning Sun...

But now it all changed :) I knew that was a movie song, a very familiar one and so that was the song called Moon River. I've just listened to it on YouTube and it's all clear now, that was the song he sang after Fool.

Sooo, anybody can tell me what CR has to do with this song? :)

All the best,
Chris
You can waste a whole lifetime trying to be what you think that's expected of you
But you'll never be free.
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