Live review: Jack Johnson (for The Music Network)

13 December 2010

by Poppy Reid

The Domain, Sydney
Saturday, December 11 

Turns out Jack Johnson has the potential to throw one hell of an outdoor concert, but maybe next time he should book a different security company. Gates opened at The Domain at 4pm (practically at sparrows fart as far as gigs go), amazingly, punters were asked to toss their water and food into plastic bins or throw it out.

Yes, Jack Johnson provides free water stations and yes as far as outdoor concerts go, the food was reasonably priced and his performance way surpassed any negativity, not to mention he’s forever in our good books for donating 100% of tour profits to charity…but whose idea was it to start proceedings so early and have only one pizza stand?!

Moving forward, I was unfashionably late and devastated; I missed Australia’s radio announcer turned blues muso, Ash Grunwald and the Canadian indie femme-philandering twins, Tegan and Sara. Despite the crowd of 17,000 the sheer cleanliness of The Domain was an initial shock, whether that was due to roaming undercover rubbish collectors or for fear Johnson’s environmental wrath would rein upon them if they didn’t, was unclear.

Opening with favourites Taylor and Sitting, Waiting, Wishing, it was intelligibly a night for the people and not for promotion of his latest album To The Sea. Of his 26-song set, Johnson played only 5 new tracks and even threw in a few covers like Steve Miller Band’s The Joker and G.Love and Special Sauce’s Rodeo Clowns where Ash Grunwald joined him onstage.

Always one for equality, Johnson invited Tegan and Sara onstage to sing the fitting Cyndi Lauper track, Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. Pianist/percussionist Zach Gill bathed in a slither of limelight forBreakdown when he sang the first verse, before a sudden wall of fireworks erupted behind us, “I set that up for you guys. Na just kidding but it sure is pretty and it’s gonna make me forget my lyrics.”

He may have forgotten his lyrics but more than redeemed himself with a five-song encore which included Do You Remember, the so-sweet-you-could spew story of how he met his wife and Angel, “This is like ten years later when you wake up on Christmas morning and you realise you haven’t got her a present yet, so you write her a little song,” he explained.

His altered version (with added third verse) of Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer put cuddling couples and doting families on their feet and his final track Better Together proved its point with the support acts joining him for a festive ending and some seriously questionable hippy-dancing. As we all filed through the gates, what could have ended up looking like any of this summers mega-festivals, was completely contrasted by the many punters collecting their empty beer cans and chip packets and placing then in the bins on their way out.