Paul Mc Friggin Cartney

So just to help this blog get off the ground, I'll review the Paul McCartney show i went to a couple of weekends ago.

I was lucky enough to be offered a free ticket for this awesome show. It was at Piedmont Park in Atlanta Georgia. A cool park in the middle of downtown Atlanta. Much like Centennial park without a big building in the middle. The press said there were about 40,000 people there, which is, in my opinion, an understatement.

After waiting in the hot august sun for a couple of hours, the opening band came out. They were called The Script. Let's just say, if I was a Hollywood producer looking for a script, these guys would be perfect if MTV and Nickelodeon had a baby channel and needed a live act to play their opening weekend festival. It turned out to be just background noise for the hot, humid anticipation of Paul. God bless them for trying to get everyone rockin, but how do you really open for Paul McCartney if you're not U2 or Elvis? A good chance to get another beer and stand in line for the port-o-jons and get yourself ready.

Finally Paul came out, opening with Drive My Car, which made Curt the winner of out "first song" bet. He proceeded to rock through songs ranging from Wings to new Paul stuff, to Beatles songs from all eras. Songs such as Jet, Band on the Run and Let Me Roll It, to I'm Down and Paperback Writer throughout the whole show. I could go on and on about the setlist. If you're really interested in the whole thing you can check it out at paulmccartney.com. A real special treat for me was the Day in the Life>Give Peace a Chance. Awesome.

Aside from the great songs, it was like being at a show put on by your old buddy Paul. He would pause between songs to tell stories about his old friends, John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, and George Harrison. You know, for anyone else, this sort of name dropping would be pretentious but Paul was sincere in that these guys really were just his old buddies. It was also cool that this weekend was not only the 40th anniversary of Woodstock, but the 45th anniversary of the Beatles show at Shea Stadium, which he referenced a few times.

So after 2 and a half hours, the show started winding down, not songwise, but you know, the endings started getting longer and they left the stage a couple of times. Curt and I knew that it wasn't over because we cheated and looked up recent setlists online. We knew that the show wasn't over till he played Sargent Peppers and The End, which he did in the 3rd encore preceded by Yesterday, Helter Skelter and Get Back. What a great way to end a great show. He did yet another round of his "what, me?" bows to the crowd and thanked us all for being great and it was over. We found ourselves sitting there thinking "did that just happen to us? Was that really one of the Beatles right there?" Indeed it was.

His backup band was totally awesome. His drummer played over sized drums and cymbals and everyone else played gibson guitars and basses. The sound was full and the musicians were top of the line. All in all, one of the best shows I've ever seen.

Thanks to H-ron Redding for the ticket and everything else. I'll never forget this one.