Crowded House in Concert

It’s been a while since Crowded House was touring in North America, but they were here last month. And I was lucky enough to find out about it at the right time to grab two sixth-row tickets for myself and Aidan. Woohoooo!

I first heard of Crowded House when everyone else in the US did: October 1986, when I was 15 years old and “Don’t Dream it’s Over” was constantly playing on the radio. I usually spent my money on 45s because albums were expensive, but I loved that song, and something told me to splurge on the whole LP. I listened to it over and over and over, and definitely got my money’s worth.

Aidan tells me that his first Crowded House memory is from when he was about two or three years old, and I made a CD of my favorite Crowded House and Neil Finn tracks for the car. I remember he used to ask for “Neil Finn” by name, which was odd for an American toddler, LOL!  I mean, maybe little kids in New Zealand know who Neil Finn is, but not so much here.

Anyway, suffice it to say, there has been a lot of Finn-related music blasting from my car speakers over the years, and my kids have been there for it, with Aidan in particular, taking a liking to it.

I don’t go to many concerts. The last one was The Waterboys in 2013, but I only really went to that one because Neil was going, and I liked their music, too.  Before that, it was They Might Be Giants in 2005 for a family show in the park with the kids. Before I had kids I’d seen Billy Joel and Poi Dog Pondering once, and Toad the Wet Sprocket and Indigo Girls multiple times, but lately, nothing. Anyway, once I found out Crowded House was happening, there was no way I wasn’t going, superfan that I am 😀

So, we drove south down the Garden State Parkway on the Friday of Memorial Day Weekend (usually not a trip for the faint of heart, but it wasn’t terrible) and saw Crowded House at the Count Basie Theater in Red Bank, NJ. We had enough time for a nice outdoor dinner at The Dublin House, and we were at the front of the line when they opened the doors to the theater.

As an aside, aren’t these photos great? It’s part “being in the sixth row” and part “having an awesome camera in my phone.”

This concert was amazing. The music was fantastic. Some of those songs were more than 35 years old, and they sounded just as fresh on stage as they did on the albums. I think that’s not always easy to do, especially when there have been personnel changes, as there has with this group. Neil Finn was chatty and personable, and you got the feeling you could wander back stage and say “hi” and it would be cool. We didn’t, of course. Though we did think we saw two of the band members (first Mitchell Froom, and later Liam Finn) walking to the theater while we were eating our outdoor dinner. We got a real kick out of that.

Here’s a copy of the setlist, if you’re interested in that kind of thing:

Edit this setlist | More Crowded House setlists

I used that to make a playlist, if you’d like to have a listen:

Aidan remarked on our way to the car that this concert was a bucket list item for me that I didn’t even know I had, LOL! I think he was right. I wore my concert t-shirt for two days before I decided I had better wash it. When can we go again? 😀