Reviews
May 2001 Auckland Concert
The musician, the magician, and the muse!
Venue: Odeon Lounge Cafe, Auckland, N.Z.
Dates: Thursday, May 3, 2001
Friday, May 4, 2001
Saturday, May 5, 2001
Playlist:
Official set list was:-Drive
-When I see you smile
-Precious Things
-Election Night
-Counting the days
-Something Good
-You Don't Want To Know
-Be All & End All (C&W)
-Gracie
-Get Some Sleep
-Blue
-Suddenly Strange
-Gravity (although, unless there has been a name change, this was actually "Night will close us down", a Bic track from the film "Channelling Baby").
-Beautiful Collision.
The set seemed to follow that list pretty much.
Gig commentary:
The Odeon Cafe in Auckland was visited last Friday by a musician, a magician, and a muse.
The musician, Bic Runga, came on stage with her support band, Tim Arnold and Milan Borich from the band Pluto, picked up her electric guitar, announced "Hi there, I'm Bic Runga and I'd like to sing you some song's", then proceeded to enchant us for an hour and a half with her repotoire.
The magician, Bic Runga, with her tools of trade ( a Rickenbacker electric guitar, an acoustic guitar, and an upright piano) proceeded to keep a full house engrossed in her tunes, old and new.
And the musical muse, Bic Runga, threw herself at each of her tunes with intensity, the emotion in some of the songs shown through her facial expressions....ranging from sad to happy to resigned.
Bic's dialogue between songs was pretty minimal, with several apologies for dragging people out in the rainy weather. (Why do kiwi's keep on apologising for everything?).
Bic got into a lot of the songs pretty seriously, we thought during "Suddenly Strange" and "Beautiful Collision" that she was going to launch herself off the end of the piano stool! At one stage she ended up leaning almost parallel with the keyboard.
The thought of a Country & Music song ("Be All and End All", I think), written by Bic, was a bit of a worry, but the tune was actually VERY good.
"Beautiful Collision" was the one that perplexed everyone last year on the bicrunga.com messageboard contest....now, having heard the lyrics, the title sort of has some context...skies, clouds, and that kind of thing.
Hopefully some of the songs are not too autobiographical, if the lyrics from "You don't want to know" are anything to go by, this lady has a hard time with her boyfriends.
A good night, we were thoroughly entertained despite the weather outside, the new material is excellent (and Campbell, PLEASE stop apologising for the delay's....this material is worth the wait!).
At least a couple of radio play number ones there.
We heard the accoustic versions, played live, at the Odeon Cafe. The quality of the material was excellent. We can only imagine, for the next 4 ~ 5 months, what the studio produced tracks are going to be like, with the effort that has gone into perfecting them.
Footnote regarding Pluto, Bic's support band:
Pluto recently performed support for Neil Finn at his Hastings concert, and have Bic Runga as another high profile fan. Bic describes them as "the best band I have ever had", describing her recent gigs with Tim performing bass guitar and Milan on drums and piano, with both adding bv's.
"Pluto are going to be huge" Bic enthusiastically predicted for her thoroughly enchanted Odeon Cafe audience.
Watch for Pluto's debut album, "Red Light Syndrome", due out this month on Trevor Reekies Attenna Recordings label, who they have a two label recording contract with. A couple of new songs have been added to it, "Banana's in the Mist" and Stick with it" which have additional vocals courtesy of Bic.
"Pluto" Content courtesy of NZ Musician Magazine, April / May 2001 issue.