Well Ryan Adams and the Cardinals hit Wellington this week and rocked out at the Opera House last night.
Over at the Cardinal Cave Blog you can see pics of the band hanging out in "Chillington" and there is video below of Ryan at the Waitangi Park skate bowl. By his own (somewhat melodramatic) account this is Adams' last tour due to his hearing and subsequent balance issues, so I was totally amped for the gig. (Although the infamous blog post has disappeared so maybe this isnt the end?)
They opened with an awesome version of Let it Ride and played some great tracks including Cold Roses, Fix It, Mockingbird Sing and Born into a Light. Adams was also in fine form with some crazy ass banter like having a discussion with gutarist Neal Casal on why he doesnt agree with Come Pick Me Up anymore, but plays it because everyone loves it, and talking about how awesome Laser Tag at the place down Courtenay Place - "That's your funhouse dot net!" A friend of mine was also lucky enough to meet him after the show, and by all accounts he's a really easy going cool guy - "clearly kicking the speedball-a-day habit is treating him well."
On the downside, he didn't play any of the tracks I was dying to hear - there was no La Cienega, Magnolia Mountain, Sweet Illusion, The End, If I'm a Stranger, Cherry Lane, 29 or Blue Sky Blues. I could have also done without Magick, but hey he did play Wonderwall - which I'm sure on some level was a nod to me and their version of Easy Plateau was much better than the album version. As you can probably imagine from the set list below, for me the highlights were definitely Let it Ride and Cold Roses.
Full set list:
Let it Ride, Two, I See Monsters, When the Stars Go Blue, Crossed Out Name, Cold Roses, Grand Island, Fix It, Everybody Knows, Come Pick Me Up, Wonderwall, Oh My Sweet Carolina, Freeway to the Canyon, Oh My God Whatever Etc, Rescue Blues, Mockingbird Sing, Born Into A Light, Easy Plateau, Encore: Goodnight Rose, Magick.
Also I should make mention of the really really odd opening act - it was two young Maori dudes singing what was basically a kiwiana mega mix - Pokarekareana. Tutira mai nga iwi, and so on. It kind of felt like the Cardinals had found them busking down Courtenay Place and invited them to play... very weird.
"...so fast" RA-SK8 Wellington from Wilson Wolf on Vimeo.
2 comments:
SWEET! What did you think of the live version of I See Monsters? It is what they closed on when we saw them, was amazing!
Yeah was cool - it was bookended by some of the high points of the evening though.
Im still a bit gutted that none of my favs were played
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