That's Entertainment

Paul Weller, The Enmore Theatre, NSW, Australia

Just a normal Tuesday I thought.

I head to work, get on with my day. I work on my projects, I do my maintenance.

Then Kev emails me the most recent Paul Weller setlist, in preparation for the gig I've been looking forward to seeing for months, it suddenly dawns on me, it's tonight.

Now I've been pretty bad with updating the blog recently (a line I'm sure gets written in just about every blog at some stage), but for now, I wanted to write and give a bang up to date report from the life of Luke... as this was something just a bit special.

The setlist contains a long list of songs documenting playlists since I first heard "Sunflower" back in the mid nineties on a teenaged Lukes, "Now, that's what I call music" album. Since then I've listened to a fair bit of Wellers earlier works from "The Jam" and a little "Style Council" stuff too.

Paul also fronted one of my earlier gig experiences back in Southend, Essex in '97... and then littered my social calendar through the last 11 years, seeing him a t various festivals and other live shows. He hadn't toured Australia for about 20years, so this was a gig to truly get excited about.

I'd also been trying to get special permission to take my camera to the pit to get some really up close and personal shots of the act, but no bosy at the Enmore, or at Wellers management wanted to reply to my emails... so I brought it upon myself to smuggle in my camera. After getting it in at the Fratellis by the skin of my teeth with a little lense, I was gonna have to work harder this time. I strapped a lensless camera under my jacket, and carried in a 15cm long 100mm lense in my pocket so there were no huge lumps to be spotted by the doormen... Success, and as soon as the lights went down I whacked it all together and set about blasting through 2GBs of memory card space... I wish I'd brought a 4GB!

Enough of camera stuff now, you can see the images I got for yourself here. The set. Oh my. First off it really helped that the soundman was somewhere near the top of his game. Second, there was actually some kind of lightshow, and instead of watching the usual Sydney - dimley lit affair (few gigs excluded), But it all came down to the talent on stage, Weller and Craddock simply amazed me with their new takes on old classics, they managed to get to the opening line of one of Wellers most popular songs before anyone realised what it was... there was some serious fore-thought into this set of songs.

As I juggled my time between taking pictures, clapping & singing along and sipping beer, I realised I was watching what would now be remembered as one of my top 5 gigs of all time... just.