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Harry Connick Jnr - March 27, 2008 - Palais Theatre St Kilda
(Melbourne, Australia)

This was the night New Orleans came to Melbourne. Harry and his Big Band gave the old Palais a Bourbon St feel with some of the best jazz music to come out of the French Quarter. Featuring his new album “Oh, my NOLA” (New Orleans, LouisiAnna) we were treated to some of the city’s finest musicians performing a legacy of standards including ‘Bill Bailey’, ‘Hello Dolly’, ‘Jambalaya’.

Harry is very much at ease with his audience whether he be singing, dancing or even chatting about anything from “Cricket is Boring”, Fruit juices, or how much his daughter loves koalas.

Guest trombonist, Lucien Barbarin was a musical treat and a great offsider, bouncing off Harry’s lines.
The bottom line is: Harry Connick Jnr is a fantastic musician, arranger, performer complemented by some of the best musicians New Orleans has to offer. A great night out.

Any one who has ever had a movie or video camera and tried to make a short film will love this movie.
Jack Black, Mos Def and Danny Glover are high profile names in what appears to be a low budget movie.
Regardless of the cost, this is a very entertaining and funny film where a not so flash video-shop has all of its VHS tapes wiped.
Its up to Mos and Jack to satisfy the customer and carry on business as usual, so they decide to film their own versions of ‘Ghostbusters’, ‘Robocop’ and ‘2001 a Space Odyssey’ to name a few. See it.

Ray Davies. The Palais St Kilda (Melbourne, Australia) Wed 19th March 2008.

Here’s an Englishman that should be up there with the Pauls, Micks and Eltons. In terms of songwriting, tours and hits he’s done it all and he perhaps should be a bit jaded that he doesn’t command the attention that some of his peers do. But I think that is what makes up the Ray Davies persona. Here is a 63yo man who is still just as excited to be on stage as I imagine he was in his teens.
Did he care that the concert wasn’t quite a sell-out? Or that the majority of the audience was well into the ‘40 and above’ bracket? No Way. The performance we got was top class from the moment he nonchalantly strolled on, grabbed an acoustic guitar and started his serenade “I’m Not like Everyone Else”. He followed this with two of the classics: “Where have all the good times gone” and “Till the End of The Day”. This was an immediate crowd pleaser and proved to be the beginning of what was to be a “Sing-along with Ray” session.
He played a mixture of his recent albums ‘Other People’s Lives’ and ‘Working Man’s Cafe’ as well as all the Kinks favourites. Finally ‘Lola’ brought the house down and made us lose any voice we may have had left.

In between songs he’d give us a brief insight as to how songs came about. (Record Execs had turned down the Kinks because brother Dave’s guitar sounded like a barking dog - All Day and All Of The Night). Some were just places and events in his hometown, London during the sixties and others were penned whilst on huge arena tours of the states in the seventies.

As a songwriter, he outshines a lot of his contemporaries with simple tales of observation, family, neighbours, tourists and other assorted characters he has met along the way. He chats with the audience as if you bumped into him down at the local pub. An everyday guy whose had a bit of an adventure and is as proud as punch to tell you all about it.

Link:
ABC interview on 7:30 Report

Full Setlist: (Thanks to Mud)