Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers rock a returned visit to
Darien Lake
What: Concert Review
Who: Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
Where: Darien Lake PAC, Darien Lake, NY
When: September 7th, 2014
Why: As part of T Petty’s Hypotonic Eye 2014 Tour
(Tom Petty pictured above at Darien Lake 2014 photo taken by Lou Sorendo!)
Last night, one of rock n roll’s
legendary bands came back to Upstate NY for the first time in several years to
one of the biggest concert venues the area has to offer-Darien Lake. Size didn’t
matter to Petty fans because they filled up the place in drones upon drones to
a near sold out crowd of well over 15,000k. With a crowd that sounded deafening
throughout the night with their constant cheers, Petty echoed back with awesome
sounds of his own as his music flowed out from the large tent covered stage and
speakers.
Petty proved that although he and
his band may look the age that they are, they can still steadily rock and
entertain a two hour set list covering most of their hits and newer tunes from Hypotonic
Eye.
Surprisingly, the newer tunes may
have sounded the best of all what Petty sang last night. He and the
Heartbreakers did powerful performances of ‘American Dream Plan B’ and ‘U Get
me High’, the two singles from the new 2014 album.
Yet Petty didn’t steer clear of the
songs that made him legendary. He opened up with ‘Rock N Roll Star’ and
continued onto the second song of the night, ‘Mary Jane’s Last Dance,’ which
got all the older folks in the crowd up and dancing and cheering away.
While the masses at Darien Lake
consisted mostly of older people, there were a lot of people in their 30s and
40s that were attending as well who were just as more into Petty as anyone
else. Parents also were there taking their older teenage sons and daughters to
a concert to experience a band that can be loved by all ages. There were some
younger folks in the massive crowd as well, but the general age appeared to be
from 22 through 60.
Those who have been to a Petty
concert before know the man can be as humble as ever to the crowd, with his
conversations and appearances. Tonight was no expression-Petty rocked his usual
appearance of light blue jeans, cowboy boots and a jacket. He also joked around
to the crowd about how he remembered nothing about the year 1991 except that
Johnny Depp appeared in their video they made for ‘Into The Great Wide Open’
which was one of the better tunes played that night.
Petty did a number of songs on
acoustic guitar which was a bit interesting and sounded wonderful as well,
including ‘Learning to Fly’, ‘Two Gunslingers’ ‘Rebels’ and ‘Yer so Bad’.
Unfortunately, the big letdown of
the night came when Petty performed ‘American Girl ‘ at the end of his encore.
The band sounded a bit off on this tune, but that might have been because hey,
they just played for two hours and also came all the way up from Virginia the
following night. Petty himself appeared to be a bit off throughout the night and it appeared the awesome performance might have gotten the best of him by the end of it. He even tripped on some wires on the stage but yet again, almost anyone can make that mistake.
The set list overall was almost
perfect, but it would have been nice to hear something Petty usually didn’t
sing every night like ‘Listen to Her Heart’ or ‘Breakdown’.
Despite those above two things, Tom
Petty’s performance last night at Darien Lake PAC was well worth going to, and
hopefully the legend gained some new fans that night. He no doubt greatly
entertained the older ones who should have left the venue satisfied and almost
as humble as Petty himself.
Opening the concert was Steve
Winwood, who sounded tremendously good that night. He was just as big of a draw
as Petty, and many people going to the concert never left out his name when
they said who they were seeing last night. Winwood is a musician who also
defies his age and seems to get better and better live every year. The last few
songs he sang sounded amazing, especially his closing tune ‘Gimme Some Loving’.
It was great to hear a lot of Traffic songs that night as well, and he was a
perfect opener for Tom Petty and was just as good as he was if not a tad bit
better.
Grade:
Steve Winwood: ****/* out of 5
stars
Petty: 4 out of 5 stars
Set list September 8, 2014 @ Darien
Lake PAC:
Tom Petty:
1) So You want to be a Rock n Roll Star (The Byrds Cover)
1) So You want to be a Rock n Roll Star (The Byrds Cover)
2) Mary Jane’s Last Dance
3) American Dream Plan B (New Song)
4) Into the Grade Wide Open
5) Forgotten Man (New Song)
6) I won’t Back Down
7) Free Fallin’
8) A Women in Love
9) U get Me High (New Song)
Acoustic:
10) Rebels
11) Two Gunslingers
12) Yer so Bad
13) Learning to Fly
Back to Electric:
14) Shadow People
15) I Should have Known It
16) Refugee
17) Running Down a Dream
Encore:
18) You Wreck me
19) American Girl
Steve Winwood:
No comments:
Post a Comment