The last show I saw in Vancouver was the Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers concert at Rogers Arena, our holiday was based around this one as the band has no Edmonton date on this tour. Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers are on the road for the 40th Anniversary Tour with opening act The Lumineers. Went to this show with a great group of friends including my love Janis, friends Shane, his wife Angie, my Brother Citrus as well as Saunta and a friend of hers. Janis and my Bro. had never seen Tom Petty before so we decided to make the trip for this one, and this would be my fourth time seeing Petty in concert.
We made it to Rogers Arena early as a few in our party wanted to see The Lumineers. The Denver, Colorado band The Lumineers can pack an arena themselves, and the place was pretty much full for the opener which is something you don't see often. They did a good job of warming up the crowd. As for me, I can't stand the band, I have tried listening to their albums a few times and they just do nothing for me at all. I didn't enjoy them, but I toughed it out and listened and am still not a fan. Their style of music which is a folk/rock Americana mix has no original sound to them, it's all been done before and better in my opinion. I might have been one of the few who didn't care for them in the crowd. Oh well!
The Lumineers at Rogers Arena.
Now it was time for Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers. The band opened the show with the song "Rockin' Around (With You)" which is the first song from their 1976 debut album. Then it was into "Mary Jane's Last Dance" and then that's when the arena went up in a haze of blue smoke, even if you weren't one of the people to light up, I'm sure you caught a contact high as the place was smokey as hell. After that song it was "You Don't Know How It Feels" and that had the whole crowd singing along, one of many times during the show that the crowd took over on vocals, very cool to hear and see. What a great way to start the show. It wasn't til after the third song that Tom Petty addressed the crowd.
The whole show was just one great song after another, songs like "Into The Great Wide Open", "I Won't Back Down", "Free Fallin'" and "Don't Come Around Here No More". Petty then did a three song set of songs from his Wallflowers album "It's Good To Be King", "Crawling Back To You" and the title song "Wildflowers". The Heartbreakers and Petty sounded amazing through out the whole show as did the Webb Sisters (Charley and Hattie) on backing vocals, with long time guitarist Mike Campbell ripping it up all night. What surprised me was that half the show actually consisted of Tom Petty solo songs, lots of songs from the already mentioned Wallflowers album and the Full Moon Fever album. But then Mike Campbell played on those albums too, so I guess it shouldn't be that much of a surprise as those are quite popular discs. I thought he would play more of the older stuff only doing two songs from his first album the opener and closing out the show with "American Girl". Only one song from Damn The Torpedoes "Refugee" and one from Southern Accents "Don't Come Around Here No More". I thought they might dig deeper into the older stuff with it being a 40th Anniversary Tour but I have no complaints.
This show was absolutely amazing. The sold out crowd were on their feet from start to finish dancing and singing along, next thing you knew the two hour show was over, yet it felt like it had just begun. So much fun, I could have stood and sang along for another hour or two.
It's funny though that during the show I saw four incidents from where I was sitting of scrimmages breaking out and people getting kicked out of the show. Now you would think this would be something you would see at a Metallica show, but nope, this was happening at a Tom Petty concert, kind of weird. To those that got kicked out, you missed out on one hell of a show.
A big shout out to my Brother for scoring the tickets for Janis and I. It was an awesome way to top off our holiday in Vancouver. Good times!!!
Setlist for Vancouver show.
Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers at Rogers Arena.
T-shirt front.
T-shirt back.
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