San Francisco, California, USA
November 20, 1997
verve as a noun means vigor, energy, liveliness, and spirit.
How perfect was that night. Everything was seriously perfect. The music, the band, the lighting, the crowd, and the length of the whole show. Everything! I went to the Warfield at about 4:30 that afternoon. There weren't many people in line yet, maybe ten at most. At around 5:00 I saw Nick McCabe, and I think Peter and the guy who was doing the photos and documentary come out of a cab. They did sound check a little while later, which I listened to from the back of the venue.
I talked to a girl for a while who told me about the two shows in LA a few days before that. She said the first night was just unbearably loud and the other night the power went out so they only got to do one song for the encore or something. She was hoping the Warfield show was going to be better. Ha, I even saw some guys from Los Angeles who had taped both the LA shows and were at that point taping the sound check. God, now they were "Mad Fer It!" They came out about 6:40 PM. Ten minutes before hand, my Los Angeles friend and I were contemplating on meeting my friend back in line, but we decided to just stay a little longer, and I'm glad we did.
This friend of mine told me about how short Richard was, but I swear, I really didn't believe her. But this guy must have been 5'9 tops and he was hunching over too. He was really nice though. Saying Cheers and Thanks for coming and also I said how brilliant the new album was and how much I loved the first two albums as well. Nick was nice too. Simon just jumped into the van to go back to the hotel and Nick, Richard, Peter, and everyone else got in a second later.
So my friend and I got back in line and we went inside. I got a white T-shirt. I'm glad there was non sleep wear stuff for sale. I also got a poster which was two dollars. They were selling stickers but I got those free at Mod Lang a month or two later. The slides and dj were ok. They should have done that for an hour though, not two. So the Verve came on a little after nine, playing for almost two hours (the longest set on the tour I think) and it included a 45 min encore.
It all went by too fast. Here are a list of SOME of the songs and not in any particular order. If I missed some...sorry!
A New Decade, This Is Music, On Your Own (during encore), History, Life's An Ocean, A Northern Soul, Bitter Sweet Symphony (which sounded great) , Sonnet, The Rolling People (during the first seconds of this song when Peter pounds on his bass drum there were great fog lights flashing), The Drugs Don't Work, Gravity Grave, Come On, Lucky Man (dedicated to Kate of course), Space and Time, Catching The Butterfly, Weeping Willow...that's all I remember.
The lighting was quite impressive. The best I've ever seen. Richard Ashcroft did three songs solo on his acoustic including "On Your Own". There was no pushing in the crowd at all and I was in the very front in between Nick and Richard. No BSS kids, thank God. Richard didn't really have any back up vocals so the audience was really his back up and it was really great that people were signing along. The show was sold out and I don't think they sold any tickets at the door, only will call and all that. It was certainly one of my favourite shows ever. Amazing and brilliant. Everything was perfect. I was really glad that I was going to see them 2 weeks later even though Evil 105 was putting it on. I don't care...It's the Verve. Everybody did their best. Anybody who had to fly to see them would never regret it. My friend from LA said the Warfield was the best out of the three she went to. Oh yeah, they didn't show up to the after show party at Popscene. Oh well...I didn't really expect them to.
- Source: Verve-Tribute: A tribute to what was website
- Review by Teresa
