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Aarhus
NRGI Park - 19th May 2007
It was nicely with inflated expectations of myself - and about 33,000 others - pilgrimages to NRGI Park in Aarhus to attend the first of two concerts by George Michael in town this weekend. The Greek-British Pop icon concert in the park in November last year as a veritable declaration and audience success, which I unfortunately do not even attended. But several of my acquaintances did, and several of them had chosen to try to repeat the success in Aarhus.
There was otherwise put up with quite the same concert experience. The concert in Aarhus was in fact - after a closed concert in Portugal last week - the first stop on the second part of George Michael's European tour under the title "25 Live", which first presented as part of the road past the capital city last year. Tour are followed in the wake of Michael's greatest hits album "25", which features songs from throughout his 25-year career, both as soloist and the past with Wham!
Warm up Act: Grand Avenue
First, do we just have 40 minutes of warming from the Danish Grand Avenue and then again at 40 minutes with Scottish Sandi Thom. Grand Avenue has a småpompøs, guitar-driven pop rock that is uniquely placed to the stadiums, so the group had no problems with playing NRGI park up with their velspillede, melodic and very catchy songs. While the group probably is tired of the comparisons, is the musical expression is still a little too close especially Coldplay and U2 to Grand Avenue really stand out. And a crude, ghetto blaster-associated audio performance did not help the matter. (Three stars)
Warm up Act: Sandi Thom
The Scottish singer-songwriter Sandi Thom had canceled tonight's concert at VoxHall elsewhere in town to warm up for George Michael. Probably a wise move per-wise, but musically would Thom and her four musicians probably have penetrated better through on VoxHall. Enough called Thom characteristic, bright and very beautiful voice up in the soundstage, but much of the music was drowned in poor performance and partly also in musical anonymity. And Thom nearly a cappella performance of the breakthrough hit "I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker" just a choir, hand folding and acoustic guitar was shown over the heads of large sections of the audience. But at VoxHall had enough pipe had a different sound. (Three stars)
George Michael
And so it was finally time for George Michael. He opened the concert just as the park in November, with "Waiting", the short, acoustic ballad, ending his second solo album "Listen Without Prejudice Vol 1". Incidentally standing behind the impressive wave-shaped, large screen, which was in the middle on stage and almost looked like a waterfall splashing down from the ceiling, in which thousands of stars reflected in it. After the song's last words "here I am" came Michael looked on stage to an audience roaring with excitement. Quickly, he went into the hard pumped and extremely danceable "Flawless (Go To The City)" and the party was in progress. At the same time changing the graphics on the big screen, which was assisted by two smaller screens on the sides, into a veritable fireworks of advanced geometric shapes in all colors . An impressive piece of equipment that does not let Jean Michel Jarres laser light manifests from the eighties much later. Behind this sensory bombardment was Michaels nine sex big band together across six small scenes stacked on each other three and three in an imposing and somewhat alternative scenography.
In the foreground ruled himself said tonight's main character, with its many movements across the huge stage and in the long run scene came out to audiences far beyond the ramp - and the fans took greedily accepted. And the voice was, as expected, large, rich, warm and very musical, although George Michael apparently trying to avoid the really high notes. There is probably been 43 years.
Fast and slow
The first two numbers were really very telling of the breakdown of tonight's material, where George Michael unscrupulously did very subdued and often more or less solve drum ballads close to different forward roaring dancing shoes-wearing. Thus for example we got on the hard pumped "Precious Box" completely calm and very beautiful "Father Figure", where George Michael was extremely knowledgeable help of the six excellent gospel singers, he had brought.
Unfortunately, they exhibited different songs also the slightly fuzzy sound reproduction, as at least I was exposed, where the concert organizers had placed Mr notifier, at the expensive long side, slightly tilted to the left of the stage - and far from this. The sound was for quite fairly, and significantly better than during heating names, but not exactly hi-fi quality, and I dare not think how fat gospel what might have sounded if the sound quality had been on the same high level of musical performance and stage show. And in the more fast-paced songs disappear nuances even more than the ballads.
The lack of sound was also virtually the only appeal of an otherwise excellent concert, obviously, and also bidding for hits like "Too Funky," "Shoot The Dog," "Faith," "Jesus To A Child", "Amazing" another Wham! classics, namely "I'm Your Man", and of course the ultimate heart-pain-soul, "Careless Whisper". This evening's moment of goosebumps-signed but it was quite subdued performance of "Praying For Time", where George Michael singing in front of a descending sun on bagscenelærredet while it looked as if he soppede in an ocean. Suddenly exploded the sun behind him slowly and then sank into the sea. Video artist Bill Viola (among others known from the basement of Aarhus' museum pride Aros) could not have made it better.
A second small stroke of genius was to let the concert end with - credits after George Michael had left the scene and the band still played at the end of "Freedom '90". An appropriate conclusion to a successful popaften where only the slightly fuzzy sound, pulled down the overall impression. And the stage show and the track list, incidentally - with few exceptions - was identical to the show in the park in November. But one can not do a good thing too often.
PS: For the sake of it should be added that after the concert I spoke to several who had seen the concert from the lawn below, and they thought that the sound was superb. But it was not completely up in the grandstand, section C2, 22 row, seat number 29
George Michael plays again in NRGI Park 19th May
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