Well that, my friends, was just fabulous.

Great venue, (mostly) great crowd, amazing seats, and an exceptional set from Powderfinger. This show beat the pants off the one I saw [intlink id=”201″ type=”post”]6 weeks ago[/intlink] at Rod Laver Arena. That show was great, but it was still a band doing their thing, on show number 8 of a total of 29 shows in that batch. In hindsight, they already seemed tired at that point. This, however, was the final stretch. The first show after having 2 weeks off, with only another 5 gigs after this one. And it showed. Powderfinger actually looked like they were having fun at this gig – and shitloads of it.

From looking at the set-lists from the rest of the tour, I was pretty sure they were going to open with Love Your Way, as every other show on the tour had opened with that. We were up at the bar tryng to get a drink when they came on and ripped into Belter, so the drinks mission was abandoned to get to our seats. The rest of the set followed suit, with not a hell of a lot of overlap from the last show- apart from the obvious hits that every show had, we were treated to a bunch of songs we’d not heard at the last show- Belter, The Metre, Already Gone, Nobody Sees and Private Man. One song I would have loved to have heard, and haven’t heard live for at least a decade, was JC, from Double Allergic. But, you can’t have everything can you?

We were also treated to having Tiddas join the band on stage for a few songs to provide backing vocals. They could have been louder in the mix, but still sounded terrific.

I didn’t take as much video at this show, and wasn’t really looking where the camera was pointing for most of it (I’m not into looking at a live show though a camera lens), so a lot of it’s pretty shit.  It’s posted at the end if you want to take a look.

Bernard was on fire tonight- talking up a storm and really looking like he was having an awesome time (they all did). At one point he spotted his ex-girlfriend from year 12, Nadine, in the audience and told the crowd how she left him for another guy who was into The Smiths. It was pretty funny. He also said that he wished the other Melbourne shows has been at the Music Bowl instead of Laver- and then proceeded to say how wrong their management and agent had been to book the shows there, when apparently the band had wanted all the Melbourne shows to be at the Music Bowl. Controversial. I wonder how Paul Piticco and Jess Ducrou felt about that? I suppose with only a few shows left and a shit-tonne of cash flowing in, they don’t really care.

They actually fucked up a few bits through the set which was great to see! Cogs fluffed the ending of My Kind Of Scene- it wasn’t hugely noticeable, but he managed to finish the song a fair few bars before everyone else… he picked it back up though and recovered well.

Being that close after all these years was pretty surreal- Nobody Sees really reminded me of seeing Bernard (Bernie, as he was back then) at the R.E. Hotel in Toowong when he used to solo shows in the beer garden…. circa 94/95 I’d say.  Even sitting next to a bunch of bogans who’d had a few too many Bundy’s and didn’t know when to shut up was ok- it was just like being at the pub 15 years ago.

All in all it was a perfect way to see the band off, and I’m so glad that the Laver show wasn’t my final live memory of them. Anyone who follows this blog and read my thoughts on [intlink id=”201″ type=”post”]that show in September[/intlink] would have seen that I was actually meant to be seeing their last ever show in Brissie in a few weeks. An unexpected opportunity popped up to go overseas with my wife on a work conference, so I couldn’t really knock that back, with my only reason being to see the last ever ‘Finger show. It would have been great to see, but I daresay I’ll be pissed in a pub in Shanghai when they’re playing, and I guess I can always buy the DVD when it comes out. And thanks very much to the kind folk at Secret Service for swapping my tickets.

The set closed, like all the rest of the tour, with These Days.  The lads did a round of the stage waving and thanking everyone, with Bernard popping into the audience (possibly to say hi to Nadine?).  The final bow was bowed, and that, as they say, was that.

Official setlist

Videos from the show….

Belter

Lost and Running

Burn Your Name

Sunsets

The Metre

Tiddas

Thrilloilogy

Already Gone

Like A Dog / Stumblin’

Cogs drum solo

Nobody Sees

Private Man

My Happiness

Passenger

Capoicity / Pick You Up

(Baby I’ve Got You) On My Mind

These Days