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My new Nick Sey­mour designed Crowded House t-shirt

And some hair action. Dark­ness is the new light.

11 years after the Farewell to the World con­cert, Crowded House 2.0 reformed and has returned to Sydney.

In another 11 years time, all of Sydney would remem­ber that day in Novem­ber 1996 when the band played until Don’t Dream It’s Over. The entire 4+ mil­lion people will say they were there; just like Woodstock.

Start­ing with Neil Finn’s per­sonal favour­ite song, Private Uni­verse; a song where Matt Sher­rod can show his drum­ming metal — to the final Bet­ter Be Home Soon; the crowd swooned and sang along.

At times the con­cert was like a Neil Finn revival meet­ing for yup­pies. Whilst Crowded House wasn’t cool in the 1980s and early 1990s, they cer­tainly are now. High FM radio rota­tion songs such as Weather With You, Four Sea­sons in One Day and Don’t Dream It’s Over become hymns for all to sing along to. And the crowd cer­tainly joined The Crow­dies in the old clas­sics. It’s strange how you will sing along with 10,000 other people yet never do so in an office.

New songs, like all new Neil Finn songs, were let lose with album match­ing qual­ity. It is the band that recor­ded the ori­ginal songs; even with a hir­sute Liam Finn join­ing his dad for two songs. Two news songs: Pour Le Monde and Silent House res­on­ated most with the audience.

A little jour­ney into Kraftwerk-inspired disco spill­ing into Split Enz Spell­bound, and back again demon­strated the musi­cian­ship of the group. A bunch of blokes get­ting together and enter­tain­ing. Giv­ing a voice to those uncool enough to like the Crow­dies; but not hiphop.

1.0 will be remembered. And can never be replaced. We miss you Paul. Is it Crowded House sans Paul Hester? Yes, but 2.0

The above blog post obvi­ously shows Neil Finn at a recent LA gig from Crowded House.

“Ads by Google” on the right show a Crowded House advert­ise­ment. From liveearth.msn.com. Why didn’t MSN come to me dir­ectly and rid them­selves of the middle­man? I would, and have, pos­ted about this con­cert for free! Now google are get­ting a cut!

Sadly, I will miss this con­cert as I’ll be in Japan on hol­i­day. I am sure I’ll be able to watch replays across the broadband.

Neil Finn quoted from spinner.com, top 5 song writers:

• Bob Mar­ley
• John Len­non
• Paul McCart­ney
• David Bowie
• Neil Young

I am not a major Bob Mar­ley fan, and Neil Young is a little too folksy for me. The oth­ers: Lennon/McCartney and Bowie. Yes.

Dave Mus­taine, lead singer of Mega­deth.  In a column called My List, artists share what songs mean a lot of them and Mr. Mus­taine chose Crowded House’s “Don’t Dream It’s Over” as his #1 pick.

“I hear this wherever I go,” says Mus­taine of the mel­an­choly love song off the Aussie’s band’s 1986 debut.  “I could be hav­ing the abso­lute worst time, but I hear this and it bright­ens my day.”

This is Crowded House all over. One listen to Neil Finn and my day gets brighter, too, Dave.

(Photo: Matt Sher­rod, Neil Finn from video clip Don’t Stop Now)

Neil Finn and Crowded House at their best. video: Watch the video now

Gui­tar weird­ness at 2:20 and lyr­ical changes at 3:00 into the song. Love it.

Crowded House will be releas­ing their first stu­dio album since 1993’s
Together Alone this sum­mer, which includes two tracks fea­tur­ing Smiths
legend Johnny Marr.
Time On Earth will be released on July 2^nd and will be pre­ceded by the
single Don’t Stop Now on June 25^th.

Source: Crowded House Album to Fea­ture Johnny Marr

And full album track-list here:

http://www.nme.com/news/crowded-house/27923

‘Nobody Wants To’
’Don’t Stop Now’
’She Called Up’
’Say That Again’
’Pour Le Monde’
’Even A Child’
’Heaven That I’m Mak­ing’
’Silent House’
’Eng­lish Trees’
’Walked Her Way Down’
’Transit Lounge’
’You Are The One to Make Me Cry’
’A Sigh’
’People Are Like Suns’

NineMSN will be stream­ing Crowded House for the Live Earth con­cert later this year.

In the middle ages of the web, Neil Finn hos­ted a web­cast from his stu­dio some­where in Auck­land. Avril and I watched, emailed and listened to Neil do our request and song online. This was in stark con­trast to the very per­sonal con­cert to the massive 1996 Farewell to the World show only 5 years earlier.

This morn­ing, the reformed Crowded House web­cast from Peter Gabriel’s UK stu­dios (yes, that Peter Gab­riel). Evid­ently, Peter was serving canapes and red wine out­side the stu­dio for the attendees.

Some­times music is like saus­ages; you love the end res­ult but never want to see what goes into the mak­ing. Watch­ing Crowded House in these early stages of form­a­tion where it was a little loose could have put off an unsus­pect­ing watcher.

Gen­er­ally, people who write poetry or music when younger lose their edge when older. Life has sta­bil­ised, and there is little occur­ing that tugs the emo­tion strings of the lyr­i­cist. Neil and the band have had the tra­gic death of Paul Hester to deal with; and this flows through the new songs. From what I heard, the chord pro­gres­sions are typ­ic­ally obtuse Neil but strangely the lyr­ics have a dir­ect­ness, not heard in recent Finn works.

The vibe was relaxed, the band feels like a bunch of old friends get­ting together. I hope this reform­a­tion is a cath­artic exper­i­ence for all; and the demons can be exorcised.

Matt Sher­rod, drum­mer for Beck, is join­ing the reformed Crowded House as the drummer.

Know­ing the qual­ity of Beck’s per­cus­sion, this is going to lead into some inter­est­ing directions.