New Paul McCartney Out There Tour Thread (Part Two)

[MOD: Continued from part one, http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/new-paul-mccartney-out-there-tour-thread.349154/page-40]

Chicago show is over. Quite a long US tour ahead!

 

Any surprises tonight?

 

nope. same old, same old.

 

He said hello to a different city, everything else he said was word for word the same as the last few years.

 

Only San Diego was announced (because Paul likes to be annoying and only announce one show at a time) but I've heard there are more shows planned. It makes sense when looking at the current touring schedule:

August 14th: San Francisco
September 28th: San Diego
October 2nd: Lubbock
October 11th: New Orleans

I would say that a show on September 30th is very likely and I'm sure he will add dates prior to San Diego as well.

Plus, Paul's website still says this "Keep checking PaulMcCartney.com for further announcements as the 'Out There' tour expands into September and October."

 

If he adds a show in San Antonio, I'm gonna cut somebody.

 

It amazes me that people still complain about this (not digging at you, just commenting generally). It's what he's done since year dot. He's old school: a show is just that - a show. I mean, if I go to see a musical, I don't expect the setlist to vary McCartney doesn't do a gig, he puts on a show.

 

Paul's Early Days shot to number 1 on Billboard's Twitter trending chart. Hopefully this will encourage him to add the song to the setlist.

http://www.paulmccartney.com/news-blogs/news/early-days-goes-1-on-billboard-s-twitter-trending-chart

On another note, does anyone have the soundcheck from the Pittsburg show? I would love to hear this version of Alligator.

 

Agreed. I know people want him to vary the set list from show to show but he didn't even do that back in Wings. Why expect it now? It's like beating your head against the wall to be disappointed about him not doing something he's never really done. As for his stage banter, i just read a story a few weeks ago in the Guardian about how the vast majority of stage banter by all artists at a concert is scripted. Yes even those "spontaneous" moments in Springsteen concerts are scripted and practiced and timed, according to the Guardian story. I saw Paul last summer so I'm not going again in 2014 since the set list is much the same. However, I also saw Paul in 2009 and the setlist was vastly different from 2009 to 2013 -- I heard about 19 news songs in 2013 than I hadn't heard him play in 2009. That's varied enough for me.

Also, here's a great view of the Chicago show from Consequence of Sound. "Even further evidence, he remains as awesome as ever."

Nice quote from the review: "Pardon the hyperbole, but New is actually more than fantastic, it’s exceptional. Upon its release, I gave the album a B+ and called it “enjoyable, and accessible, and quintessential to McCartney’s catalogue.” Nearly a year later, I’d probably boost that grade up some."

Also this quote: "I’ve never really enjoyed “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” but seeing nearly every living soul in the arena sing each syllable almost instinctually makes me wonder if any future singer-songwriters will ever have that much pull, and with such a wide demographic, too."

I had much the same experience with Ob-La-Di. Not my favorite Beatles track by far, but dang, the crowd went absolutely crazy when he did that one at the show I saw last year. And I admit, so did I. It was fun.

 

Half the enjoyment for me, as a somewhat 'jaded' fan, is seeing how much his music means to other people in the audience and how much fun everyone has. It's what makes his concerts special in my opinion as it's one of the few shows I can go to where almost 100% of the audience is enjoying almost 100% of the set. The atmosphere at Macca gigs is unbeatable and that's one of the reasons I'll defend him not shaking up the set list more - he has great experience on what an audience reacts best to and plays to that. He's #1 and we'll not see his like again.

 

I remember having a similar epiphany in 1993 when I saw him play Penny Lane at Earl's Court. At the time I thought of the song as one of his silly overly-poppy things and wasn't overly enamoured of it. Seeing grown men, old enough to be my parents staring into space, misty eyed, singing every word as if in a trance rammed home to me just how special and important these songs are.

And to those who bemoan the fact that Hey Jude et al keep cropping up time and again, all I can say is that I remember that Penny Lane moment, and I recall my own moments of watching Paul McCartney sing Hey Jude for the first time in front of me and I try to remind myself that most of the people at any given gig will be experiencing that exact same feeling and emotion. I wouldn't want to be the one to deprive anyone of that feeling.

 

There are a hell of a lot of cues for sound, effects & lights in a show like this, I work in the events industry and if I was working on it I would be very appreciative of Paul's professionalism in sticking to the plan. That way everybody knows exactly where they are in the show. They know when the moments are that they can dive behind a piece of kit and start re-patching if they have a technical issue and they know when to hold back. Paul is leading a huge team to deliver a show and it isn't just the people you see onstage. I would love to see him throw in some surprises but this is a slick 'big' show and he chooses to focus on consistency. Credit it to him for being a team player, he works with his crew, not against them and is bang on the money every night.

 

Good review here in the Chicago Tribune: "Paul McCartney Rebounds at United Center."

This bit in particular made me laugh: "And when he starts to sing “Hey Jude” or the “Once there was a way…” beginning to “Golden Slumbers,” he’s so unmistakably Paul that you may suddenly feel a giant lump in your throat. He is, after all, the living songwriter-performer who has done the most to shape popular music — and in many ways the culture surrounding it. Some guy behind me at the United Center kept shouting, “Thank you! Thank you!” at McCartney, and while one part of me wished he’d put a sock in it, another part completely got it. ... He’s one of the wonders of the artistic world, a thoroughly joyous presence, and these moments must be savored."

Still, the reviewer would like to see Paul play more of his late-career solo work: "Given the numerous worthy albums and songs he released over that 30-year stretch, it’s a shame he doesn’t make the case for any of this material in concert the way that, say, former collaborator Elvis Costello revisits different phases of his career when playing live. This gets to the crux of a central tension with McCartney: the desire to please vs. the desire to get creative."

 

First of all, I've only attended one McCartney show in my life so this isn't about me being jaded but...

While Paul has never been the type to vary his set list during a tour, I think the difference between what he's doing now and when he was touring with Wings, is that each individual Wings tour was distinctive. Yep, every show on the Wings Over America tour was the same, but then he moved on, took a three year break and did a UK tour with a set list that was totally different. In the 70's, 80's and 90's he would take breaks from touring and didn't tour the same countries and territories year after year (whearas this current tour is his second summer tour in America in as many years). However, as of 2014 he's been touring non-stop for the past 12 years (ok there was no show in 2006 except for a performance at the Grammys) and at this point all of these tours have just kind of blended in with each other, and there hasn't been enough variation when a new tour has been given a new name. That's the problem I think.

 

Did he stop for a moment to soak up the applause? That'd be new!

 

I don't think anyone expects him to vary the set list show to show. I think people would want him to vary the set list from tour to tour or year to year or different legs of the tour. (He did this as recently as 2002 - removing Let 'Em In, Michelle and She's Leaving Home and adding C Moon, Mother Nature's Son and Vanilla Sky between April when I saw him in PHI and September when I saw him in Atlantic City. He also did this between when I saw him in Dec 1989 and July 1990, removing Ain't That A Shame, Ebony and Ivory, Hello Goodbye, Maybe I'm Amazed and Twenty Flight Rock and adding Birthday, John Lennon Medley and Let 'em In).

As for me, I wouldn't mind a set list that's on the more static side of things if it reflected all phases of his career. The current set list contains nothing from 37 years of his 52 year career.

If I were to go see him this year, here are the songs (besides the New stuff) that I would not have seen him perform before:
All Together Now
Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!
Eight Days a Week
Hi, Hi, Hi
I've Just Seen a Face
Listen to What the Man Said
Lovely Rita
My Valentine
Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da

Bolded are the ones I would be interested in seeing. Nothing there from the last-half of the 70s, the 80s, the 90s or the 00s. A whole lot of 1967-1968.

Meanwhile, I would wind up seeing my 6th performance of Let Me Roll It, 7th performance of Eleanor Rigby (with crappy synth strings) and Back in the USSR, and 8th performance of Band on the Run, Hey Jude, Let It Be, Live and Let Die, Long and Winding Road and Yesterday.

Paul made Penny Lane moments for folks in 1993 and then again after a 12 year gap in 2005 and then not in the near-decade since. His shows continued to sell out during the non-Penny Lane times by making moments like that with other songs. He could do one of Hey Jude / Let It Be / Long and Winding Road / Yesterday to the same effect and fill in the other three spots vacated with songs that would give his ardent fans a Getting Closer moment or an Uncle Albert moment or a Tomorrow moment or a Press moment or a No More Lonely Nights moment or a Ballroom Dancing moment or a Wanderlust moment or a Girl's School moment. Hell, I'd even take a Spies Like Us or Off The Ground moment to assure myself that I didn't dream his career in the 80s and 90s.

And since it came up, how exactly did Band on the Run achieve Hey Jude / Let It Be / Long and Winding Road / Yesterday must-play status? Live and Let Die I get - big boom. But Band on the Run?

Who's having a moment from the oft-repeated Let Me Roll It?

 

I agree. I don't think most complaints are that the shows don't change from night to night - it's that they don't (or barely) change from year to year. I don't expect Macca 2014 to have a radically different set than Macca 2013, but SOME changes (other than the "New" songs) would've been nice.

Comparisons between Macca and a stage musical are apples/oranges. A stage musical is a scripted show while a rock concert isn't intended to be the same way.

And while Springsteen and many - most? - others have scripted moments, there's still a lot more room for variation than Macca allows. Bringing Bruce into the Macca setlist discussion is going into proverbial "bringing a knife to a gunfight" territory...

 

I think that most people who are interested in his post 1980 solo career would be very happy if he copied Costello and added the 'spinning wheel'. That way he would only need to change just one song each night, and over a tour he would have played 40-50 solo songs that would otherwise never be played.

I find it interesting that both the Chicago Tribune review and the Consequence of Sound review, whilst both really praising the show, wished that he would play more solo songs from the last 30 years. It seems that it is not just us McCartney freaks here at Hoffman who would like to see more focus on his solo career.

Hopefully reviews like these will encourage him to dip into his more recent career.

It would be interesting to see the results of a poll asking McCartney fans here at the Hoffman site something like this: ''How many of you would pay to go and see Paul perform a concert only made up of his post 1980 work.''

 

Thanks for posting this great review. The writer seems like a genuine McCartney fan, and I agree with his Costello comment strongly; I also wish that he would play more songs from all parts of his career.

 

It is good to see a music journalist admit that he initially underrated a McCartney album. It seems that even when some critics really like the album, they have a hard time properly praising it, for what ever reason.

 

Here is another interesting quote from the Chicago Tribune review:

''His albums are almost always weirder than advertised; “New” is all over the map stylistically and mostly successful, and his 2008 The Fireman collaboration with producer Youth (“Electric Arguments”) is truly out there. Yet you get the feeling he’s thinking that the people paying hundreds of dollars to see him aren’t expecting a deep catalog exploration, and that's too bad, because McCartney’s catalog is as deep as anyone's, so there are even a lot of hits he never plays.''

 

He did "I'll Follow The Sun" during soundcheck yesterday.

 

Amazing show last night. My favorite song was All Together Now, just a real joy seeing that live. Really lit up the arena too. Didn't really care for Save Us as the second song though.

Kind of bittersweet knowing it's likely the last time I'll see him live. Of course I said that the last few times I've seen him as well, so who knows

 

I saw him perform Hey Jude in 1989 at MSG and yes, it was amazing. I also think people would have blown a gasket (in a good way) if he did it with Wings in the late 70s. But at the very least, I think he can leave it off of the future video/CD releases of later tours (if he does any more after this one). The one exception of course is the live one he just did with Ringo.

 

I understand that it is just a show- but he has to know by now that peole pay attention when he does something new. Bonafide hits like Uncle Albert, With a Little Luck and No More Lonely Nights have NEVER been done live. I can pass on Spies Like Us though (#6 in US). Also would love to see him try Rocky Racoon (maybe in Dakota??)