so last week the family and I were headed to Maine to have wedding parties (actual wedding was in Dec) for my oldest and her husband. I grew up in 'burbs of Boston so we decided two nights in Boston before going up to Maine would be great. Then Paul's tour was announced and Fenway Park was one of the sites but the date didn't work for our planned trip, then he added a 2nd date, which did perfectly. So me, my wife and 3 of my kids went to see him perform in Fenway.
While it was my 8th time seeing him, it was still incredible. I was worried because it was the 2nd day of back to back shows, thought that would impact his voice some. It may have, there were only a couple of songs that I thought he sounded "off".
The playlist was great, as always, the tribute to John , singing I've got a feeling "with" John was great. We were off to one side a bit , had the huge screen to watch but it did not provide all the same feeling as if you were in the center, what they projected behind them at times was different/better than what we saw on the giant screen.
Besides the huge excitement on anything Beatles, it struck me as funny that one of the loudest and most excited response to a song was Ob-la-di. I've always liked it a lot, in fact had it on mix tapes, mix cd's and playlists for many many years. Always felt like it was some kind of guilty pleasure, not sure why, maybe because I have read so much that the others didn't enjoy the recording of it too much.
Paul had some different and new stories, yeah, he had a few I had heard 7 times before too.
The one song on the playlist I don't understand the appeal of him wanting to play it (with so many songs possible to replace it) is Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite! It gets Wix on the accordion, imagery of swirling/getting high kind of vibe - but not one that I have put on too many mix tapes over the years.
His band as always, was spectacular. In fact, as Paul nears 80, I noticed he gave some parts to Rusty, most notably, the part when he switches to acoustic in middle of Band on the Run. In the past he quickly would get handed the acoustic, hand back his electric and go right into that incredible acoustic strumming part. This show Rusty had the acoustic and took over that part.
the show still is more than 2.5 hours, one tiny break to let the encore be an encore. I will find some pics I took later tonight maybe and post some here.
