I grew up with the Stone Roses; they were the soundtrack to my University years and beyond. She Bangs the Drums was my favourite song, alongside some of The Smiths’ classics…
I grew up with the Stone Roses; they were the soundtrack to my University years and beyond. She Bangs the Drums was my favourite song, alongside some of The Smiths’ classics. So when I heard it announced that the Stone Roses were finally coming to New Zealand, I was ecstatic.
Vector Arena was the venue for the concert on 26th February which seemd to gather all the 35+ crowd. They could call it R38 rather than R18, I thought to myself as we filed in past men who were bald rather than skinheads. Despite my seats being quite far down the right side – best if you swivelled around a bit or you got a sore neck turning right for two hours – the view was excellent. Actually, in retrospect the General Admission area wasn’t bad as they got to sit at the back end looking straight on to the stage and hardly anyone in GA sat there, oddly.
About the first ten metres of standing audience was dancing with their arms in air all night, the rest all nodding heads. The band were really crowd-pleasing, Ian Brown even picked up all their set lists to hand out to the crowd as momentos. He played tambourine sticks all night, which he also handed away.
Ian Brown was in excellent voice and looked great, in a black teeshirt with green ferns on the neck that he’d obviously got in New Zealand to wear.
The sound quality was really good. They did a ten minute Fools Gold instrumental, all the songs from first album, about three from the second album, and all the big hits, over about 80 minutes on stage. No encore, but as they walked off they said "Sorry it’s taken twenty bloody years to get here" which got a huge laugh. Stone Roses were 10/10.Better late than never.
Megan Robinson
Photos Kevin Robinson 26 February 2013
Leave a Reply