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		05/05/06 - BEALE STREET MUSIC FESTIVAL, MEMPHIS, TN Review by Helen Barton: Ok, my reviews should come with a health warning (may cause drowsiness), and even more so in this case as I’ve got lots of time to kill today on my trip home, with long flights and connections etc. So if you’re not going to be driving or operating machinery in the next couple of hours, please read on. What a location for a gig! Down by the Mississippi River in the city of Rock ‘n’ Roll, and apparently this festival is now one of the top 5 in the world. As I’d managed to wangle this trip through work and felt extremely lucky to be there I decided not to queue all day….there’s plenty of time to do that this summer and thought it would be fun to see the sights instead. So at 11am, instead of my usual position in a sleeping bag outside the venue, I was at Memphis airport’s car rental waiting to meet Janice and her mate Dawn for a day at Graceland (which btw is interesting, tacky and probably great if you’re an Elvis fan, but if not you end up all Elvis’d out after about two hours). Just before leaving we headed to possibly the world’s tackiest gift shop to find Bryan a Memphis-related gift and settled for some black and gold Elvis boxers….better than those red Calvins any day! Janice and Dawn were kind enough to let me stay in their hotel room which was 10 minutes from Beale Street, so that I wouldn’t have to travel back after the gig to my dive of a hotel which was 4 miles out of town. Interesting piece of trivia though….the cab driver who took me to meet my fellow baddies said that he picked Bryan up from that very hotel – in 1985! I begged him to let me in on the gossip but he said he couldn’t remember much about it. So I just started to wonder if he might have slept in the same room as me (well…a baddie’s mind does tend to wander of its own accord into all sorts of directions…) So after chilling in Janice and Dawn’s much nicer and more central hotel room for a while (which was on ‘Adams Street’!), we left there at about 6pm and headed down to Beale Street on these quaint little tram things called ‘trolleys’. With plenty of gigging experiences coming up I was content to enjoy this show from further back – so imagine my surprise (and delight of course, hehe), when we arrived to find the floor area almost completely entry, with only the front row full – even though the doors had opened an our ago! Well they did say this festival would be relaxed but this is taking relaxed to new levels! So we just strolled to 2nd row, just right of where Keith would be, and I held our spot safe while the others went off to get pizza. When they got back we spotted Diane and Heather just a bit further down from us (Heather’s WYG t-shirt gave it away lol), so here we all were, all the baddies together and close to the front without even trying :)) The artist before Bryan was Jason Mraz who I thought was quite good – he does a mixture of reggae, rock and rap, and has some crazy female fans who jump up and down, yell, and shout “I love you Jason!!” a lot. Baddies of course are way to sophisticated to display such excessive behaviour I thought g, but such excitement from the baddies was to follow shortly when Jason finished his set, left, and so did all his fans – they were the ones who’d been on the barrier! So me, Diane and Heather were quick to grab their places, with Janice and Dawn preferring to stay 2nd row…and you know that euphoric feeling when you find yourself on the barrier? Well imagine finding yourself on the barrier when you arrived at 6pm expecting to be at the back! And by this time we were almost centre too – just between Bryan and Keith’s mics! We had about half an hour to wait for the dudes and of course by this time I was beside myself, nails almost chewed off etc. At about 9.15 out ran Keith, Norm, Gary and Mickey to the opening of So Far So Good, closely followed by Bryan :-))). No matter how may times you go to the gigs, that first one in a season, after however many months of not seeing them (8 months in this case for me) – the excitement and adrenaline of that moment is just like nothing else. I knew it had got me because I instantly started trying to sing the first verse but couldn’t, coz I had too much of a lump in my throat! SFSG works brilliantly as an opener I think. In hindsight it’s perhaps not as exciting as Room Service but things have to move on, and I was so chuffed to see the dudes that I didn’t really care what they were singing anyway LOL. The four band members were onstage before the music started and Bryan ran out just after they’d starting playing. He changed the line ‘we’re headin’ south babe’ to ‘we’re headin’ south to Memphis!’ which got a massive reaction. After that they launched straight into ‘Somebody’. It was cool not knowing what was coming next – the songs were all in a slightly different order to the last tour, although nothing else was new apart from SFSG. Considering Bryan isn’t supposed to be that popular in that part of the world the crowd were loving it (and the floor was packed by the time the dudes came on). Bryan was lapping it up. He always looks like he’s enjoying himself but this time he looked absolutely thrilled, grinning, laughing, interacting with the crowd, sticking his tongue out at people etc. Towards the end of ‘Somebody’ when he yelled ‘Somebody just like you!’ and pointed in random directions, everyone was yelling back at him, and I’m not sure why but I wasn’t expecting that here for some reason – it’s fantastic to see him appreciated like that all over the world. Next was ‘This time’ - a great surprise – love that song!! We baddies on the barrier were well away by now (Heather is as crazy as me btw!). When it finished the noise was deafening and Bryan stood back taking it all in for a moment before exclaiming “it must be Memphis!” (another deafening reaction). He then said they were gonna try to pack as many songs as possible into the short time they’d been given. Some girls were yelling something I couldn’t hear and Bryan asked “you want what?” (more incomprehensible yells), so Bryan said “I don’t think I can give you that on stage baby” (lol). Open Road was next, just as awesome as always. One thing I did notice in this gig was that Keith didn’t seem as animated as usual – then I realized it was to do with the way the lighting had been set up – the spotlight seemed permanently on Bryan and this made Keith seem as much at the forefront. For Open Road, Norm and Keith came forward and stood in a line with Bryan so it was cool to see them all together. They launched straight into 18 til I die from there – one of the best for crowd participation I think and Bryan was doing his ‘textbook’ performance, arms in the air for ‘get both feet in it’, and of course showing us that tongue at every opportunity! Then came ‘Can’t stop….’ Another of my favourites live (this was actually the first live video I ever watched, which made me want to go and see Bryan…12 years on I still always enjoy this song especially, and the energy that goes into performing it (and every song really!). Whatever we say about Bryan doing too much soppy stuff these days, they really do rock on stage and the energy just kept on going and going all the way through. Bryan then told a story about the last time he was in Memphis, when he saw Chuck Berry standing in the middle of the road in a silver outfit. “How can I forget that?” he asked with a grin. Back to You was next – always great fun at gigs but I don’t think many of the crowd knew this one. I hadn’t taught the US baddies the actions and felt a tadge silly doing them on my own. Bryan persevered and even tried to get the bounce going. Me and Heather were bouncing like crazy with our hands on the barrier but BA was at the other end of the stage and didn’t notice us :( He yelled as he usually does ‘let’s get this place goin’!!’ but it just didn’t happen to he gave up and just launched into the chorus instead. He introduced 69 by saying “I heard this song on the radio today and I don’t know if I should play it or not”. He then went off on a tangent about how he’s had an amazing year so far: “we’ve been to Pakistan, South Africa, the Middle East, America, and now Memphis! …that was meant to be a joke by the way”. He then slammed into 69, full rock, to a crazy reaction and then stood back as the whole crowd sang the first verse. At the end when he sang the line ‘me and my baby in a 69’ he yelled ‘and that’s the whole story right there!’. Lots of girls screamed hehe. Cuts Like a Knife was next and the na na na’s got quite crazy (although I’m still yet to see a ‘na na na’ session that tops Antwerp ‘05). Bryan did it in his usual way – taking the piss out of our crap efforts by doing that camp thing with his hands, tapping the mic etc, then putting his arms up and nodding with approval when we finally got it loud enough lol. It occurred to me that many festival goers who weren’t there to see BA hadn’t seen that before so they found it really entertaining....for an experienced baddie things like that could get a bit samey but I just love it anyway :) and had a bit of a sore throat after my na na na-ing efforts :)))) When he finished saying ‘You’re all crazy’ I was expecting WYG but instead he started introducing EID. He didn’t tell the sandwich story or the 45 minute story this time – he just said how he thought we’d know it as a piano song but he’s gonna play it exactly as it was written. As he’d stopped for a chit-chat we thought now was the time to try to attract his attention and get him to play ‘Hey Elvis’ (he didn’t play it of course…..), so we chucked the Elvis boxers at him. They missed the stage by about a mile. So then Janice gave me her Elvis handbag that she’d bought in Graceland, so I held it up to him and yelled ‘Hey Elvis!’. I don’t think he understood me – he just looked at me and said something which I couldn’t hear and gave me a twinkly grin, and I just beamed at him like a right girl. Why is this I ask myself! I’m a sensible woman and this is all it takes to turn me into a silly puddle? Anyway, EID followed and then I was completely lost in the moment. It’s not my fave on CD but live….mmmmmmm… He introduced WYG by asking “is it true that everyone in Memphis can sing?” He picked a girl in a black t-shirt but for some reason a girl in a green t-shirt thought she’d been picked and the security guys started lifting her over the barrier – then Bryan said ‘no, the black t-shirt’, so they had to put the original girl back and get the other one. I felt a bit sorry for her! But the black t-shirted girl, Brooke, a furniture-mender from Memphis was pretty good…she gave Bryan a big hug when she got on stage (awwwww), and didn’t know all the words but was very confident and was clearly having a great time, and at the end Bryan said “she’s crazy!” When he started singing Heaven the whole crowd sang the first verse – I’m not sure if Bryan had planned for this though as he looked a bit surprised, said “hey!” and then started the song again, shouting “let’s see all your cellphones!” Cue – a thousand cellphones are suddenly in the air. Its only Love gave K-man a chance to show off his legendary awesomeness. His solo can be described in one word, ‘Keith’. It was great to watch Keith and then watch Bryan watching Keith coz he just stands there grinning at him. Not only can you see just how awesome Keith is, but also just how awesome Bryan thinks Keith is. Fantastic stuff. TOTTLGOMIY was the last song of the main set (the you-you-you’s just about finished off my voice for the night….), and then they came back on for a one-song encore which was Run to You. At this point some drunk people behind us had started pushing and fighting, so the security guys were standing right over us and obstructing the view! So I didn’t see the guys much for the last song and then the drunks calmed down just as they were leaving the stage. Still, it was a fantastic show, even if it was a bit short….an hour and 20 minutes, no KWR and no acoustics! Because of the short performance they’d stuck to just the ‘bread and butter’ songs (and all from Anthology) but every one of the 80 minutes was awesome! Thinking we’d seen the last of Bryan for the night, we got the Elvis boxers back from the security guys and wandered over to a different stage to see BB King. We’d only been there a minute or so (and quite far back) when he announced that Bryan Adams was going to join him on stage! It turned out though that Bryan wasn’t gonna sing with him – he just wanted to have his pic taken with him! So Bryan came out wearing a zip-up top over his t-shirt and had his pic taken with BB King on the stage. Then we saw him leaving the stage, towards the left, and there was a kind of fence thing up at the side. It looked like he was walking towards it so me and Heather bolted for that fence, Elvis boxers in hand getting huge dollops of Mississippi mud all over our shoes in the process….oh dear, why does rational sense leave me when Bryan is involved!! The two bouncers standing there asked us what we were doing and we explained that we didn’t mean any harm, we just wanted to give Bryan a present. They joked that if Heather took her top off they’d go and give the him the boxers LOL. In the end, one of them, called Mark, agreed to go and see Bryan and give him the shorts for us. We asked him if he’d bring Bryan back with him to see us and he said he couldn’t promise anything! He came back about five minutes later – without Bryan but also without the boxers. He’d given them to Bryan saying they were from two fans who were waiting at the fence for him, and apparently Bryan said “thanks” and asked Mark “are they (the fans) cute?!!” to which Mark had replied “yes they are!” and Bryan said “cool”! We stood there for a while longer and in the end Mark said that while he couldn’t take us to see Bryan he could take us to ‘see’ (as in look at) him, so he took us a little way into the backstage area and showed us Bryan sitting upstairs in a room watching BB King from backstage. He then escorted us out again, and a bit later another guy came out to say Bryan had gone. Awww. Oh well, at least he got his boxers, so those of you going to Kansas tonight, watch out for them peeping out over his jeans….. Thanks Bryan and dudes for another great night, and thanks to Janice, Dawn, Diane and Heather for all the fun! Roll on Huddersfield, I'm massively in the mood now………… (Above) A webcam picture taken just a few minutes after Bryan left one of the many stages in Memphis infront of the Mississippi River. 'Train' were on the stage after Bryan, and also just down the river bank the Memphis legend 'BB King' was playing. Setlist: So Far So Good Somebody This Time Open Road 18 Til I Die Can't Stop This Thing We Started Back To You Summer Of '69 Cuts Like A Knife Everything I Do When You're Gone (with Brooke from Memphis) Heaven It's Only Love The Only Thing That Looks Good On Me Is You Run To You (Bryan's set was shorter than normal due to time restrictions and this being a festival. He was initially allocated 1hour 40mins but because things were running behind he only got 1hour 20 mins onstage.)

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