As I alluded in the previous post, the Tears for Fears went ahead as planned. I'm not sure how close they were to actually cancelling, but a lot of the Jazz Fest on Wednesday was cancelled, so it could have happened. For that matter, the air quality is getting worse today, and personally I think Toronto should cancel its fireworks show, like Niagara has already done. But so far they are going ahead.
Anyway, the setlist is here. I imagine it's only a matter of time before the show ends up on Youtube. They played a fair bit of the recent album, The Tipping Point, and indeed it is a strong album. I don't think they skipped any of the songs I was expecting to hear (maybe "Advice for the Young at Heart," but I wasn't heartbroken they dropped that one). They sounded quite good, though I did wonder if Roland had a filter applied to his voice on one of the last songs ("Break It Down Again"). They talked about a few good Toronto memories, including how the "Head Over Heels" video was shot in the Emmanuel College library (when they were still using the card catalog). I mostly wanted to hear "Mad World," "Pale Shelter," "Change" and "Woman in Chains," and I thought they hit it out of the park on all of them. I have to say I didn't realize that Curt Smith had lead vocals on most of those songs, except "Woman in Chains." This was the first time on this tour that they did "Creep" as part of the encore, though they kept it in the set yesterday in Laval. It looks like they used to sing "Creep" a lot back in 2017 and 2019, and I guess they're bringing it back.
I remember hearing Bowie talk about how Velvet Underground (and I guess by extension The Ramones) were actually more influential than The Beatles, since they influenced/inspired more bands (basically it was just too hard to sound like The Beatles...). While that is probably true overall, you can't deny that "Sowing the Seeds of Love" has the Beatles' fingerprints all over it. I'd say that probably also holds true for Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer" and also The Waterboys' "The Whole of the Moon." Overall it was a good gig, though of course it would have been much better if Garbage had opened up, instead of Cold War Kids, whom we went out of our way to avoid. My wife commented that this was the first time she got to her seat and the opening act had already left the stage. So far the 80s bands have been rolling back the years. Love and Rockets, The Cure and now Tears for Fears have all been great. Hope the string continues next week!* I'm scheduled to see Sparks and Robert Plant** (not at the same time...).
* I also hope we continue to luck out with the weather. There has been a lot of rain in the forecast, but we really lucked out both with The Cure and Tears for Fears. So far, it is not supposed to rain on Wed., which is when I was planning on biking out to Budweiser Stage to see Robert Plant. Fingers crossed.
** I think it's too much to hope that Plant adds "Ship of Fools" to the set, though fairly recently they added "In the Mood," so I should get to hear that, which is cool. I guess it's too bad my college roommate Mike really loved The Who and The Grateful Dead and wasn't nearly as much of a Led Zeppelin fan, since he was the one that mostly arranged for us to get tickets to shows in Detroit, and I could have seen Plant in 1990 (with Faith No More opening in fact). Oh well. Hindsight and all that...
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