Hi connorstreet/Chris:

Wow! What a comprehensive review! Good job! Kudos to you! Totally relived the whole concert again with your colorful descriptions of that night!

I caught both shows and both venues are just beautiful! The drive from Seattle to Woodinville - just gorgeous gorgeous! Beautiful greenery and blue water greeting us on every turn. The drive to Portland from Seattle a bit long with traffic here and there but just as beautiful. What a wonderful change from the Southern Cal scenery where I reside.

Both concerts were exceptional and keeps getting better. I thought the same as you, "at a zoo?" but actually was a great venue with alot of room to spread out. That night was so far the best for me because 1) the pre-entertainment (bird show!) 2) Afton singing! Knew she could do it and couldn't understand why she wasn't asked to do so earlier. Excellent job, it was a pleasure to hear her sing! 3) Curt singing Seven on Sundays. Just a beautiful song, he always does an excellent job live and and I never tire hearing him sing it. Sends chills up my spine whenever I hear it!

Ditto for Gruno working hard. I've mentioned this before but he's all over the place, before, during and after the concert. He must sleep good at night!

For those going to any of the outdoor venues (Saratoga, Costa Mesa, Vegas, San Diego) may I offer a helpful suggestion? Spray on some "Off" or something of similar nature due I got so
many mosquito bites!

And lastly, wanted to thank the Northwest fans at the last 2 concerts. You are the best!
Met alot of fans at the concerts and wanted to mention that they are the sweetest people I've met. They are really enthusiastic about TFF and very appreciative of them playing there. And they really welcome "out-of-towners". Chris, wished I had met you!

p.s. I was the one holding the "Fully, pleased" sign in Curt's honor!

Jaynie

Let me preface this by saying I'm not complaining about the setlist as I love ELAHE (though I'm not a fan of Call Me Mellow, I'd personally perfer Killing With Kindness or Last Days on Earth).

That being said, a little surprised they're still playing 8 "new" tracks especially with such a great back catalog. Will be interesting to see what the crowd reaction will be here in Los Angeles where the new stuff didn't go over nearly as well as the older stuff last time...as you'd probably expect to happen.

Very happy to see Memories Fade, Raoul, Quite Ones and Pale Shelter included. Really looking forward to the show. Guess I'll have to keep dreaming about The Working Hour though : (

Hi all,

Wow, what a great show. Months ago- I was very hesitant and a bit worried about the venue. The zoo? I had taken my kids many a time to the zoo and even caught the summer bird show at that amphitheater before, but a Tears for Fears concert? Well, all concerns went way out the door when they started playing. It was a great outdoor venue and the weather couldn't have been better- warm but not hot- with a beautiful sunset. Plus, it was their first sell out of the tour. They filled the 5,000 capacity venue and likely could have sold twice that with it being sold out in May. I felt lucky because we were late getting to the venue. We arrived at 4:30pm and doors opened at 5pm (show starts at 7pm). The whole lawn was nearly filled up when we got in and I was just about sick but wandered up front and convinced a couple who had these huge blankets spread out just for the two of them to let us sit in a small parcel of lawn just left of center (towards Roland) so we essentially had first row lawn seats in front of the dance floor.

Lot's of just hanging out eating your picnic, listening to some cool tunes (that the boys picked out) pre-show. Viva La Vida, Thomas Dolby (updated acoustic Science version), Flaming Lips, David Bowie, Peter Gabriel, Don Henley (Sunset Grill), Spock's Beard, amongs but a few were played. It's fun to think they picked out the selection. Met Nick in the bathroom stage left (under the stairway and balcony) but waited to say hi until we both left. Doug and Charlton were frequently poking around too. Gruno is everywhere.

As some of you may have seen on Curt's website, there were two opening acts for the show in Portland. The first one out were three zoo-keepers doing a mini-bird show. They had some hawks swoop down from way, way back often with their claws just whizzing over someone's hair to land on the stage. The finale was a huge American bald eagle with this enormous wingspan. It was funny to see Doug Petty, Charlton, and Nick come out for this. Charlton worked his way right over to were the eagle landed and as it came right by him, his mouth was aghast- "Woooooow." Nick caught it on his videocamera so I'm assuming it will be up on the YouTube blog soon. It was actually a cool opener. Not at all cheesey. Imagine being one of the zoo-keepers, "Yea, I opened for Tears."

The second opening act was Michael Wainwright. He impressed enough. Favorite song is "Someone Like You." He spoke a lot between numbers and before this one said that on his website, he asked for a female volunteer to sing the duet with him but Portland was the only venue to not have a volunteer so he had one of the roadies- Afton. She went up there and amazed everyone. He said this was unrehearsed but are we to believe this? She's obviously had some experience at singing before. Catch Afton at the merchandise booth setting up (tall, long blonde hair) and tell her to come clean. Wainwright did a great job mingling with the audience before, during, and after the show. It was a great way to promote his Cd which I bought and btw is produced by Charlton Pettus. It's only $10. After the show, he sits by the merch booth and will sign and take pics with you. Wainwright is also the new Tears 'whipping boy' (see below for more details).

After Wainwright, there is more set-up. Gruno and his crew are hard at work as they were for the hours leading up to the show. It was fun watching Gruno going through all the little details like putting guitar pics in all the microphone stands, pulling out the green bag of Skittles, and opening the chilled Diet Cokes cans and putting them in their places on the stage. Ah, the coddled life of a pop star. The sodas came from the Tears for Fears logo'ed blue cooler (as my brother-in-law commented, "where can I get one of those?). Maybe it should be made available at the merch stand? Maybe Gruno can answer this- what is the small green spray bottle next to the skittles that Curt sprays in his mouth periodically, including before launching into the first song?

Okay....well if you aren't going to make a show or don't want to read any more spoilers stop here. You've been warned.

The set list was the same as the show in Washington. It starts off with the SFTBC backing track of "Listen" playing powerfully and loudly. As it starts to play, Charlton, Nick, and Doug come out, wave to the crowd, and take their places. Then near the very end of the song, out come the two stars. The place goes wild!
1. Everybody Wants To Rule The World rocks the house but unfortunately there is this unspoken rule that if you are sitting on the lawn, you can't get stand up for fear of blocking the view of others in front of you. There is front area for people to dance and stand up and this slowly fills up during the night to bulging capacity. This rule will get broken.
2. Secret World
3. Closest Thing To Heaven. After this song, the boys finally talk some. This is where Roland's British humor starts coming out and Wainwright starts to become the whipping board. Roland commented the last time they played in Portland they played "in the center of town which was near a Macy's where he bought a handbag. Speaking of handbags, we have Michael Wainwright with us tonight." He sings back-up on STSOL and others.
4. Sowing The Seeds Of Love
5. Call Me Mellow
6. Mad World "the original version" as Curt comments with the familiar drum intro.
7. Memories Fade. This version blew me away and I think is a pure treat for us hard-cores, long time fans. I've actually never heard this live in person and don't think they've regularly played this since the Big Chair days. I swear that this new version has new lyrics and even a whole verse added. I relistened to the album version tonight and it is nothing like the one being played! Now if I could only remember the new lyrics! And hopefully this will be released in the future by them. It's a gem.
8. Raoul and the Kings of Spain is great to hear again and now that I'm thinking about it, I hadn't seen them live since the Salt Lake City Live Kings tour there in 1996!
9. Quiet Ones
10. Floating Down The River is a real show stomper. Roland began by explaining that "this is the most nonsensical song I've ever written yet within it has the key to life." I also think there are some subtle lyric changes at the end. I've relistened to the original studio version from the Secret World France compilation and you can maybe hear a hint of this but live you can really appreciate the "Floating Down the River WITH FRIENDS" part. The crowd as I really got into Roland's enthusiasm and love for this song. He kept jumping up and down during the chorus with his hair flying. This needs to be released as a single in the U.S. It would do well!
11. Everybody Loves A Happy Ending- Curt comments afterwards that his girls call this the "wake up song." More inside jokes with Curt commenting that Wainwright is "O for 5 now." Roland does a hilarious impersonation of Wainwright almost word for word for what he said between his opening act songs "to catch up with me on Twitter." More Roland humor- "when they told me I'd be playing next to the monkeys, I told them they had the wrong band."
12. Seven Of Sundays is a nice change of pace and let's everyone cool down. It's a great song and Curt does a superb job. Dare I say that this live version on this particular night was even stronger than the studio verson. Curt was really on with top vocals and feeling. A fan had kept raising a sign that said, "Fully Pleased" just to the side of us.
13. Ladybird. It is during this segment that we notice as Roland waves to his left at two lines of fans up on a stairway and a higher balcony that there are two pre-teen looking kids dancing for the rest of the night with zoo masks on. One is a chimpanzee and the other a giraffe. They are wrap around masks that make it look like they are something about of Planet of the Apes. It is a surreal sight and I wonder if the boys noticed? Too bad I didn't get a picture of this.
14. Pale Shelter
15. Break It Down Again. From here on out, the crowd is up and dancing. Am really glad they played this. It's a powerful song and seems like it should have been a #1 for them much like EWTRTW or STSOL. More Wainwright back-up vocals to accent Curt's.
16. Head Over Heels. Kinda thought they'd go into Broken here but didn't.
17. Woman In Chains. Okay the funny part here is Roland states that this next song is meant as a male/female duet but 'if you've noticed there are 5 males up here.' On "girly man vocals," (Roland's term, not mine) they bring in Wainwright to sing Oleta's part and it surprisingly works well. Also, remind me to sometime post a picture and/or mpeg of the guy in his 50s who was drunk, took off his tie dye shirt (it is Oregon), and started dancing like Roland did in the TWYA video in front of us. All the other fans around us expect it to be on Youtube soon.
- Encore - with Curt introducing the band, including "The Reverend", "Little Sicily", "Portland's own (Doug Petty),' and "I'm the other guy."
18. Shout. As I said everyone was up the last three numbers. I knew this song was coming and it is probably my least favorite Tears song but I was surprised how much I got into it. How can you not when it's them?

There were a select few that had back-stage after party passes on "R-Roland" marked on most of them. Alas, I was not one so didn't get to formally meet the boys but that certainly didn't put a damper on a memorable night. I did buy the Wainwright Cd and an autographed tour poster specific to Portland. Had a great time. You will too! I'm hoping this newfound enthusiasm (the boys seemed really happy and energetic up there), will bear fruit in the near future and spawn more tour dates and new material. We need a new album! We can only dream but after last night it sure seems possible.

All the best.

-Chris

Dying to see the setlist! Anyone know?

Maybe it's destino....Michael and Afton! Wouldn't that be romantic ? :-)

The date isn't on the site yet Papa S. :)
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