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The piano that we bought on the weekend was delivered today, to the excitement of the whole family. The boys were very keen to have a play, as you can see below, and both myself and Jennifer had a try as well. My first job was to work out how to play that song that all piano players seem to know – the one from the Tom Hanks movie Big (and also in Superman Returns) – I’ve worked out the right hand melody, and also the lower bass part, but can’t for the life of me play them at the same time. Can serious pianists play these two parts together or is this song invariably a duet?? Anyway I’ll keep working at it. It’s great to have a piano and I look forward to working out how to play it properly
Categories : Family, Personal, music | 0 Comments
Tuesday night Jenni and I went and saw Keith Urban in concert in Perth. For those who are not in the know Keith is an Australian country music artist who moved to Nashville in the 90s, was hugely successful over there, and ultimately married Nicole Kidman. I’d never listened to any of his music until a few months ago when we first started thinking about going and visiting friends in Nashville – since then I’ve bought 4 of his CDs and I really quite like them. And from there I’ve gone on to explore a bit more of the country genre.
Keith is nowhere near as popular here in Australia as in the USA – he probably gets more publicity here because of his marriage and rehab problems than he does for his music. So I was interested to see what sort of demographic the crowd would be – would it be just middle aged women, hard core country music fans, or teenage girls? In the end it was a mix – not too many cowboy hats in sight, but there were plenty of 30-50 year olds and a sizeable minority of younger people. Women certainly far outnumbered men.
The warm-up act were West Australian band The Waifs who played a tight and enjoyable set, however most of the crowd were impatient for the main concert. Keith did not disappoint. Visually the show was great – he had a great lighting setup and they made good use of the video screen including live video and synchronized video clips. But most importantly the music. Keith is a very talented musician. He sang a good mix of mostly up-beat songs from his last few albums. He’s got a good voice and is a surprisingly good guitarist. He played the majority of the lead guitar and solos for most songs although was backed up by a very able band playing a range of instruments including electric and acoustic guitars, mandolins, and banjo. Keith himself brought out an impressive armory of guitars including Gibson Les Paul and SG, Fender Stratocaster, Telecaster, and Jaguar and a couple of acoustics. He probably favoured the Gibson SG and Fender Tele most of all though. Keith seemed friendly and relaxed although he didn’t talk a whole lot between songs. I was surprised at how strong his Australian accent was when speaking – I expected it to have more of an American twang to it after so many years in the USA, so that was nice. Overall it was a very enjoyable show. As Jen remarked, he’s definitely one artist who comes across even better live than on his albums. I would certainly go and see him again if I had the opportunity.
Since the concert was at Burswood we stayed at the main Burswood hotel overnight (where the service was not as good as one would have expected from “Perth’s Best Hotel”), lost a bit of money at the casino and then went into Perth the next day to do some shopping. Was nice to get a bit of a midweek getaway from work and the kids.
Categories : Australia, Guitar, Personal, music | 6 Comments
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