Birmingham NIA - 13th April 1999

In the early days of the South's concerts the cars at the venues tended to be metro's, fiesta's and other assorted bangers.  Not these days, the car park was full of BMW's Saabs and sporty Toyotas.  Perhaps this is a tribute to the universal appeal of the band, but it doesn't have a great effect on the atmosphere in the cavernous NIA, more about that later.

The Barenaked Ladies opened their set with a couple of jokes and the new single.  The majority of the crowd I am sure knew little about the band, but the warmth of their humour and the sheer strength of their music soon raised the temperature.  Most of the material was from the new album, some oldies from 'Gordon' were thrown in for good measure including the trademark 'If I had a million dollars', no 'Hello City' though to some disappointment.

Some triumphant dancing and spoof medleys at the end of the set warmed up the crowd once more, (a sweaty bloke singing 'Memories' and 'My Heart Will Go On' is a vision that will not fade easily !)

So to the Beautiful South, no shambling onto the stage tonight, it was curtain up to reveal a primed band of, you won't believe this, quite healthy looking individuals.   Gone is Paul's whisky - replaced by a pint and even Dave Rotheray seems to have slimmed down a bit.  The band soon launched into opening newie "Look What I Found In my Beer."  It was a case of polite applause and some cheering for the first few numbers which included old live finale 'Woman in the Wall' relocated to the start of the set.

The massive hall was obviously a little different to the more cosy warm up venues, and the aforementioned BMW driving 'new fans' a little less inclined to jump about than 'the few' down the front.  "It's a different approach at these big gigs isn't it ?' joked Paul, you're not wrong there my man.

But the boys (and girl) have been doing 'big gigs' for a while now and it wasn't long before we all warmed up.  A mid-set spot for recent encore piece "Your Father and I" brought some dancing, and Hamster looked worryingly serious when suggesting the topic of  "The Lure of the Sea" appealed to him, I'm sure he was joking?!  Other inclusions were "36D", "You Keep It All In", "Have Fun", "Perfect 10", "Dumb", "Don't Marry Her", the wonderful "Liars' Bar" and "Old Red Eyes is Back"

Rapturous applause at the end of the first set brought the appearance of the long time contributors The London Community Gospel Choir who Paul quickly helped bring a little soul to the proceedings with "The Slide", "One Last Love Song", "The Table" and the fantastic "Alone".  Some people actually left before encore number two, the majority stayed behind and swayed to "Good as Gold" played as the finale.

All in all a good night, pd seems to be in excellent mood, lots of in jokes and "sexy" dancing - (honest!), Rotheray is making little mistakes and musical jokes on his guitar, Hamster still can't dance but is in fine voice as is Jacqui (who got through some great vocal sparring with Heaton), Sean is still quiet and Steady's new hair cut makes him look like your dad.

The old encores of funk and disco are long gone, replaced by stylish soul.  It was more laid back than the small gigs, but they were still damn good.  They were happy, we were happy, my girlfriend didn't like it - "I can't dance to this" - bloody new fans eh ?

PS. If anybody's got anything Southish they want to sell get in touch.

david@cellet.co.uk

Cheers Dave