Runnin down the road trying to loosen my load...

I am not the biggest Eagles fan but I grew up listening to "One of these Nights" and "Hotel California" and they were definitely a part of my teenage years. When you live in North Wales it's easy to try and imagine that being a beach bum in Rhyl is just like being in California (it isn't!).

So I was pretty keen to see them live when I heard they were coming to the big B. Seeing bands in Bergen is always a treat because you get to see stadium bands in a small castle with a few thousand people, rather than at the back of some huge arena. There are some downsides, which include -
The atmosphere - open air, broad daylight, doesn't really create an intermit environment, feels more like some festival warm up
The weather - this time it was great - it can be very grim, standing in the rain for 4 hours
The people - or at least some of them! There is a special kind of person who goes to concerts in Bergen, typically middle aged women with perma-tans and awful dress sense, who just stands with their back to the stage and talk endlessly at their friends. Why the fuck are they there? They should have just saved the money and gone to the pub or a restaurant and left the people who want to see the band enjoy the show.

Anyway it’s still great to see big bands, pretty close up and its fantastic that the likes of the Foo Fighters, Metallica, the Eagles, Bruce Springsteen etc all come to a small town, population 250 thousand.

So back to the Eagles. They played for just under 3 hours (with a smoke break at half time). Very professional show, sound was great, visuals were also really impressive and entertaining. Very polite and gracious with a hint of humour thrown in. It must be shitte to know that all the crowd really wants to hear are the old favorites and you have played them a billion times! But it didn’t stop them, they played all the songs I wanted to hear including Hotel Calif., Long Run, Take it Easy, Life in the Fast Lane, finishing up with Desparado just for Katharine. They also played Don Henlys "Boys of Summer" which so reminds me of being 17, I could almost taste the summer of 1985 in North Wales!

Overall, very glad we went, another great band ticked off.