Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Guns N Roses & Bryan Adams - in one weekend


When asked how my weekend has been and what I have been up to my answers rarely vary. It's usually "Cleaned up the house...entertained some friends...watched a movie...read a bit ..." and so on... But last weekend was truly different. I attended the Guns N Roses concert on Thursday evening and the Bryan Adams concert on Friday and both were spectacular.




Not much of a rock fan myself I was at GnR on work since I was producing our evening show which was broadcast from the venue. The concert started at 10 pm on the dot and was followed by two hours of great music and brilliant production. I loved their rock rendition of the theme tunes of Bond and The Pink Panther. It was a high energy performance by Axl Rose, with him and the guitarists constantly running across the stage, good lighting and pyrotechnics - keeping the 21000 people strong audience enthralled. Abu Dhabi sure does know how to pull off an event!


The Bryan Adams concert on the other hand lacked the production value that GnR had but that became irrelevant once he started singing. My first reaction on seeing him was that he looked so much older than I had expected him to but obviously that has not affected his music.


The highlights of the concert for me, other than his singing Summer of '69, was when he sang 'When you're gone' with a girl from the audience. She was from Goa and was very impressive. He also performed with an Oud player from Lebanon, whom he had met backstage for just five minutes before the concert began. They were good together.
I will remember this concert as the first concert I attended alone and loved every minute of it.


Dubai has been good for me music wise. Since moving here I have attended concerts of George Micheal, Alicia Keys, Beyonce, Sir Elton John, Bryan Adams, Santana, GnR, Nelly Furtado, Jonas Brothers, Ustad Rahat Fateh Ali Khan and more. My dream would be to watch Madonna and Abba live and I wish I had had the chance to watch Micheal Jackson in action.

Anyway...here's to many more concerts in 2011!

3 comments:

Anuradha said...

Hey Enjoy !! Nothing like live music by some of the songs you grew up on ..

Subhadip said...

Nice! I am surprised at how many concerts you have attended there - didn't realize so many of them were organised there.

In India, unfortunately all the concerts are either in Bangalore / Delhi / Mumbai (and sometimes Shillong!) - but never in Kolkata (where I currently stay).

BTW, Bryan Adams used this same song for his crowd-duet at the concert of his I attended!

Kanchan said...

Thanks Anu! Subhadip - many concerts take place here, I think, because it is a very good market due to expats from all over the globe. Of course they take place only in winter. I'm looking forward to Eric Clapton, Stevie Wonder, Amy Winehouse and The Train next year. Also ended the year on a high by watching Atif Aslam and Rahat Fateh Ali Khan last night.
Yeah I grew up in Pune and didn't attend a single concert since none took place there. Things are changing though and Bryan Adams performs there in Feb!