I’ll be honest, I’m not that familiar with anything but the most popular songs by The Verve. However, my girlfriend Danielle (who is also the one who recorded this fine show) is a big fan. I’m not real sure why I never got into them back when they were super popular for the first time, but I just didn’t. Maybe it was because when they got popular in the US, I’d moved on from rock to electronic music for a while, I’m not sure. I’m not even going to try to write anything up about them, I figure if you like them you don’t need any encouragement, and if you don’t you were probably sick of Bitter Sweet Symphony being everywhere and you’re not really interested right? Yeah. However, they’re a really good band, and very entertaining for a band I only recognized 3 songs from. I can’t really say much about the new songs, because out of the show almost all of it was new to me!

For the band, this was a warmup for Coachella. You could tell a few times that they were working out some kinks, there were equipment troubles and all sorts of stuff. However, you couldn’t tell that they’d taken an 8 year hiatus. They looked to me entirely like a band that has been ready to rock for a long time and I have to believe that anyone who’s been waiting 10 years for the band to come back to the US left the show happy.

Before playing Bittersweet Symphony, Richard told the crowd to go home and google Rolling Stones Staple Singers. I had a vague idea of what he was talking about (not a Stones fan, sorry) in that the Rolling Stones sued them for royalties based on the sample used in the song that was from an orchestral version of a song based on a Rolling Stones song… which I’ll be honest sounds pretty much nothing like the original version. But, copyright is copyright and the Stones of course won that fight. However, their younger past is full of the same sort of behavior with reworking of gospel songs to their own ends, but doing it with “traditional” songs that aren’t owned by anyone so they don’t have to pay anyone anything at all…. even though they’re basically ripping off another artist that had done the song before. (lets think David Cooke or Chris Daughtry on American Idol who are neither new nor original AT ALL but if you’re clueless about existing derivations of a song, it sure sounds new to you despite being nothing much beyond a straight up karaoke version of an existing cover. Anyway. )

Right anyway, long story short I enjoyed the show despite only knowing 3 songs. If you’re lucky enough to be seeing them on one of their 5 shows in the US, I hope you enjoyed it too! If not, I hope this recording is enough to tide you over until they do a proper US tour at some point and come around to your area. Big thanks of course go to Danielle for the recording. Enjoy!

Setlist:

1. (Intro Music)
2. A New Decade
3. (technical difficulties)
4. Sonnet
5. This is Music
6. Space and Time
7. Life’s An Ocean
8. On Your Own
9. Weeping Willow
10. Sit and Wonder
11. The Rolling People
12. Velvet Morning
13. The Drugs Don’t Work
14. Lucky Man
15. Come On
16. (encore break)
17. Bitter Sweet Symphony
18. Modern Times

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This entry was posted on Saturday, April 26th, 2008 at 7:00 am and is filed under concert.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.