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Bonny Tyler
good band - great blues guitarist - pretty good overall but that is one shattered larynx that breaks a lot!

Alan Parsons Live Project
Wow!. This is what a well rehearsed band of great players can do! Parsons' mix of thematic instrumentals and accessible melodies and lyrics writ large for live. A wonderful set....hard to fault. Every member shone...some nice extended Les Paul wailing, ....just great music!

Ice House...(really Iva Davies plus friends...)
this was good as well. The usual second guitarist broke his wrist a couple of weeks ago so they brought in another player Michael Paynter to fill in...and he is very good. Great voice and a tough guitar style.
Davies is singing and playing well....and has dropped all the teen posiness that marred him for me in his middle period.

My band toured as support for the first Flowers/Icehouse tour back in 1981 and they were a fantastic live act then.

overall a great day...very hot, no shade, 4 minutes burn time...ahh we love kiwi summers.

One interesting thing: For their first 3 times on stage the MCs were mispronouncing Taupo (which of course I cant spell properly here as the system doesnt do macrons...and Taupoo just looks silly). Any way after a couple of hours of hearing them say Towe Poh they suddenly came out and started saying it correctly (Toe Paw for those who dont know). Clearly someone told them off.

Bonny Tyler got it right first time - turns out she owns a farm and a building in Taupo!.

Just in my hotel listening to the drone of motorboats

Lawrence wrote: Alan Parsons Live Project
Wow!. This is what a well rehearsed band of great players can do! Parsons' mix of thematic instrumentals and accessible melodies and lyrics writ large for live. A wonderful set....hard to fault. Every member shone...some nice extended Les Paul wailing, ....just great music!

I loved it so so so much. Alan Parsons Project is my favourite band of all time FYI and seeing them with my Dad who also loved them his whole life was super special to me. Amazing mix too.

Depressing though - that dude on guitar shredding the hell out of and nailing some of my favourite guitar solos of all time and then nailing rock vocals. Great tone.

Highlight was Breakdown/Raven and the Keyboardist getting caught flipping someone off in the crowd.

Caught the last 30mins of Bonnie Tyler - sounded great but was losing puff by the end

Icehouse - cool but left after 30mins, not really my thing

Lawrence wrote:Bonny Tyler
Alan Parsons Live Project
Wow!. This is what a well rehearsed band of great players can do! Parsons' mix of thematic instrumentals and accessible melodies and lyrics writ large for live. A wonderful set....hard to fault. Every member shone...some nice extended Les Paul wailing, ....just great music!
.

Agree with everything you said especially the APLP set. I don't think I've ever seen such a set of 8 such talented musicians. They were the ones I wanted to see and absolutely nailed it.

I was at Whitianga.

Intro bands Whitechapel Jack were great and Automatic80's had the crowd well primed. Bonnie was great with only a few cracks. Icehouse were what you'd expect i.e. good second-tier Aussie band that would have pleased the masses. But APLP..... oh wow...

Icehouse at the Michael Fowler Centre in 1989 was my first concert.

Lawrence wrote:My band toured as support for the first Flowers/Icehouse tour back in 1981 and they were a fantastic live act then.

Was that at Mainstreet in Auckland? I remember that as a good show. What was your band Lawrence?

I saw Icehouse at Founders Theatre in the 1981. Good times

p.s. at Whitianga in the first encore "Can't help myself" they got out of sync at the start and never recovered. Bonnie had too and stopped the song midway. Thankfully they finished on a high with a tight "Nothing too serious"

I only wish they had played "walls" my favourite track off the Icehouse album.

Conway wrote:

Lawrence wrote:My band toured as support for the first Flowers/Icehouse tour back in 1981 and they were a fantastic live act then.

Was that at Mainstreet in Auckland? I remember that as a good show. What was your band Lawrence?

yes Mainstreet...that was the very first public performance of "LA Dreams".

Three piece with Leigh McGrath on bass and Vox, Robart (no last name) on drums and me on gats and synths..(MS20 , MS10 -analogue sequenser and an Elka string machine!

by Palmerston North we were ok....Wellington Town Hall I thought we were pretty good....