Fantastic to read your report Morgs, was great sharing the evening with you, Nuffy & Mr Nuffy!
Here's the setlist for
SOUTHS JUNIORS 9th April 2010(btw I've given up all hope of keeping my notebook neat - it's a lost cause
There's setlists in there upside down, back to front, any which way you care to imagine. I officially surrender!
)
Teh Lineup: Damien (guitars & GRAND PIANO
) , Eric (guitars), Caesar (a million instruments incl electric double bass, guitars, charango, quena), Kevin Kelly (bodhran), Asha (electric fiddle/maracca )
Last night was ASHA's debut with the guys and she was brilliant!
Asha is a Hungarian fiddler so it was a real international lineup - Irish, Chilean and Hungarian. With those varied musical influences it was very exciting to hear the new forms of the arrangements and there is a lot of potential there for them all to grow into each other over time and take it even further!
Was fantastic to have Morg's expert onsite knowledge on the instruments (Morgs comes from a very musical household & can play a mean charango herself by the way -
my larder of blackmail fodder may possibly include a video I took of her playing one a while back... 
)
Opening:
Remember June
To Get To You
(GRAND PIANO section!)
Beautiful (we were floating onto ceiling - this was the best version we've heard of it yet!)
Unordinary World
Ride On
(Back to guitar)
Annie's Song
Subida (A Chilean instrumental)
Guitar Man / Stairway to Heaven (OMG best arrangement I've ever heard the guys do of this, they went
FULL ON Rock version, Eric was absolutely on fire and Damien was doing the rockstar wailing almost as though his voice was one of the instruments, OMG it was AWESOME!!
Wicked Game - Fantastic arrangement for the instrumental part now with the additional elements by Caesar and Kevin and Asha did her part brilliantly as well. No Irish dance tonight but Damien was flying about the stage just grooving along dancing and still wore himself out as if he'd done the Irish dancing anyway
BREAK
Crying (Damien solo - spellbinding)
Forgive Forget / Lady Gaga Bad Romance!!
(this was my rowdy moment - I yelled out a big wooooooooooooo when I heard the first note of Bad Romance as I love this blend, whenever I hear Forgive Forget I just wait for it to kick in anyway now, I think the 2 go so well together.
(*drags Morgs out of the dark ages* 
) Fields of Athenry
Wow - AWESOME - this was the best I've heard with audience participation yet. There were some good singalongs at the Mean Fiddler on St Pat's Day but the Irish contingent in the audience at Souths left them in the shade, they were loud and could really sing - which they did with gusto! Was fantastic and Damien really seemed to feed off the energy - in many ways last night reminded me of that brilliant Mingara show in 2007 when that energy between Damien and the audience was tangible.
There was a table of Irish people beside me and they were really fine singers and joined in with vigor, so that gave me the confidence to join in with this one as well, I had a brilliant time singing along!
Rocky Road to Dublin - again, the Irish knew this one and were egging Damien along and whooping and hollering and yelling out the 1 2 3 4 5 with him - it was great!!
Bodhrans at 50 paces with Kevin Kelly - Damien met the challenge and played bodhran alongside Kevin, I loved it! I haven't seen Kevin this tour, not since he played with Damien at the St Pat's family day in 2008, so it was great to see him back! I loved the thud of the drums coming through the floor and right into your whole being.
22 Steps - FANTASTIC version, and also much unplanned hilarity for this one
There was a particular woman (eventually named "22 Steps" by Damien, lol ) who kept calling out LOUD for this song. He called back that she'd better be able to sing as he was going to make her do the solo soon
Damien then threw out a brilliant line as he intro'd it - "funnily enough, it's about a stalker" - and brought the house down
When he eventually finally started singing she was wailing along at top voice - lol at least she was really enjoying herself
It was about this time Eils returned, she had been there before the show with the boys and came back with her friend and sat at the table next to us. We were all in stitches with Damien's back and forth with the 22 Steps fan.
Everybody's Talking - lol for such a crowd of good singers, the singalong was woeful
Damien introduced the Maracca solo by Asha - it was just the one maracca, not 2
Quite an
interesting effect with just the one - sort of like a rattlesnake lol
Danny Boy - aaaaaaaah gorgeous!!! Unlike the St Pat's day crowd who sang along, you could hear a pin drop for this one last night. Stunning.
ENCORE
Hallulujah - big cheers from the crowd and stunning version by Damien. Also strangely enough, similar to the night at Mingara - our old friend 22 Steps felt inclined to join in - during the big note at the end!
Even from where we were up the back I could see a smile forming on his face, he really is a trooper after all these years performing and can take all these distractions in his stride.
All in all one of the best shows I've been to - and that feeling was universal! I heard many people around me saying similar after the show and full of praise for Damien and the whole band.
Morgs had said what a wonderful auditorium it was at Souths Jnrs and it definitely was one of the nicest auditoriums I've been in of any of the club gigs.
I hadn't been there before and realy enjoyed Souths - it's certainly easy for me to get to this one - lol well it should have been easy... Morgs already hinted at the dramas b/f and I had on the night behind the scenes trying to get to the venue, I think it set some sort of new record for things going wrong and I might just leave the horror stories at that. I made it just in time in the end after a mad scramble and b/f eventually made it there an hour after the show finished
With all the background stresses I ended up feeling quite dizzy towards the end of the show and I'm not feeling too well today but wanted to be sure to post as soon as I could how much I loved the show itself, Damien and the guys were brilliant!
Sales were going really nicely at the merchandise table with the book and CDS (Diana Rouvas was there taking care of things last night) & there was a pretty big queue there all waiting to buy! I bought the single even though I have the iTunes EP as I love the photo on the cover and collect all the physical singles of Damien's anyway regardless. I already had "teh book", Diana kindly gave me an RJ bookmark which they were giving away with the books on purchase last night, so that's a very special keepsake!
Eric had a big table of friends/family not far from us and he seemed to also really be enjoying the evening, had a big smile all night. We saw him a couple of times during the evening and said how much we loved the lineup tonight and he mentioned to us it was Asha's first night.
After the show we had a lovely brief chat with Eils as well, she is looking very well and it was fantastic to see her!
Thanks for another great show Damien, we all totally agreed it was one of the best yet!!!
)
Even from where we were up the back I could see a smile forming on his face, he really is a trooper after all these years performing and can take all these distractions in his stride.
With all the background stresses I ended up feeling quite dizzy towards the end of the show and I'm not feeling too well today but wanted to be sure to post as soon as I could how much I loved the show itself, Damien and the guys were brilliant!
This sounds like it was a truly brilliant show! Glad you all had such a great nght.
and yes, DO South Sydney Juniors again, Damien! Such pretty lighting - even hubby commented on how good the stage looked. (I'll forgive the occasional scratchy static noises 
I think Shimmery noted which song ) and produced so many different percussive sounds from that one bodhran! 
I have to say that having the drum beat has enriched the effect of the overall experience as has all the contributions from the other istruments. Eric was amaaaazing, as Shimmery mentioned, in his solo piece on Guitar Man/Stairway to Heaven Getting to his feet for that part especially worked really well - Eric really is such a gifted guitarist.
but I know they'll make up for it at the next big show 
have spent the night wondering what D wore...assumed he did 
but, alas, the memory's a bit dim two days on 
...
