Cliff and the Shadows 50th Anniversary

On Sunday, Sharon dragged me along to the 50th Anniversary Tour of Cliff and the Shadows at the Sydney Entertainment Centre.  We saw a three hour show which included mainly OLD songs from before Cliff broke up with the Shadows and they went their own ways.  As a result, I wasn't familiar with many of the songs (after all it's not me who is the die-hard fan, it's Sharon), and I was disappointed he didn't do some of my favourites like "Wired for Sound" and "Devil Woman".  I'm even a sucker for the Eurovison entry "Congratulations" and other songs from "I'm No Hero".  But alas, it was mainly older stuff.

A couple of strange things happened.  Firstly, he sold out the 12,000 seats at the Entertainment Centre within about an hour and a half of going on sale, with virtually no publicity.  Cliff has an incredible fan base (don't ask me why) and they are loyal and plentiful!  I was on the Ticketmaster site within five minutes of sales opening, and as the first tickets offered were right up the front, behind the line of the front of the stage, I rejected them.  The next ones allocated were miles back, so I rejected them.  The third time I was offered seats a little closer, but right on the side and right in the back row.  You could see the centre booking out in front of you, so these ones I didn't reject at all!

After a few hours I went back on the Ticketmaster site to see what positions were being offered and they were completely sold out.  Not bad for a septuagenarian, eh?  There were, of course, pre-sales, but they were far more pricey than the standard $139 each we paid, and we didn't want to go that far.  He would have made a lot of money from this latest tour, which at his age may well be his last, of course.  (Although knowing Cliff and his penchant for being in front of an audience, that's probably not going to be the case).

Another strange thing was the reaction of three ladies sitting next to us.  We were at the back right hand side of the audience, and as a result of the speaker stack, you could only see the left hand third of the large screen behind the stage.  If you'd been a lot lower, or more square on it wouldn't have been a problem, but a large number of people would have had the big screen obscured for them.

At the brief interval at half-time, two of the ladies went off to complain about the lack of vision in the large screen.  I wasn't sure what could be done about it.  No, I was sure what could be done about it - nothing.  The way things were setup there was no way anything could be done save lowering the speaker stacks to the floor, which may have had an adverse effect on quite a few things.  Well one of these ladies got a bee in her bonnet, and went off to complain to someone down near the mixing desk.  After ten minutes had elapsed she came back to the seats, and announced "They're not going to do anything about it, we're going home".  Her other companions then begrudgingly left with her!  Earlier on they were saying it was the first time they'd been to a Cliff concert and what with the guy's age, there's no guarantee they're ever going to see him again!

As a result they missed about ninety minutes of the concert that they had paid about $139 each to see, merely because a large part of the big-screen was obscured.  You could still see them on the stage, and you could still hear everything fine, but as a protest, the three of them left.  I'm damn sure that according to the conditions of sale of the tickets they would not be given a refund.  And in the 12,000 attendees we really didn't notice their form of protest due to their absence!

Anyway, we moved along three seats after they left to stretch out a bit and got talking to another guy who said he was from Maitland.  We asked why he hadn't seen the show in the Hunter Valley vineyards the day before and he said he was appearing in a play for Maitland Repertory Society, and only had this Sunday off.  Turns out he is in "Breath of Spring" currently running at the Maitland Playhouse and we had seen him last year in the "Maria Martin Murder Mystery".  He was the father who got killed.  Interesting coincidence that of the 12,000 people in the Entertainment Centre at the time, we had already met the guy (within a theatre) sitting next to us!

Cliff is a consumate performer and always puts on a good show.  Hell, Sharon has been to six of his concerts, and the amazing thing is that I've been with her for three of them!  I could think of better artists to see than Cliff, but then again I could think of a lot worse.