Split Enz Live!

Ticked off another item on the Kiwi Bucket (Hat) List this week by seeing legendary 80’s band Split Enz live at the TSB Arena in Wellington.

As a bonus I skipped the support act in order to catch up with our South Island-residing friend Holly who happened to be in Welly for work, enjoying a glass of nice pink wine over a natter in the comfy Incontinental Hotel bar.

The seat was back row up in the Gods with a huge girder two seats away, but the mature crowd around me were well behaved (no standing up in front of me, no incessant chatter driving me to distraction) and I had a decent view of the band on stage.

The TSB Arena is better suited to hosting netball matches than major concerts — the drums echoing off the back wall on the quieter tracks — and would have benefitted from turning the volume up a bit, making them sound a bit “safe” and polite. Mind you given the original band members and most of the audience will have their Gold Cards it’s not surprising.

As expected the suits were natty, the songs were classics and the musicianship impeccable. Tim’s vocals weren’t quite there at times but made up for it in showmanship and banter with the crowd. A drunken dancing woman went from speaker surfing to full-on stage invasion and was tolerated kindly for a while, before getting dragged off stage by Security when the novelty wore off.

As with any gig I hung around at the back for the last couple of encore songs (they’d played all my favourites by then) then snapped up the last Pie-Eater sized T-Shirt from the merch stand and legged it back to the car to beat the traffic. 9/10.

Note for my folks: I’m assuming you’ve not heard of them (which is fair enough, not your decade) so here’s a sample!