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The George Michael dance mix block party rolled into TD Banknorth Garden a little late on Sunday night. Tickets for George Michael said “8pm prompt” but as the man himself explained, he never goes on before 8:30 to make sure no one misses a minute. Weather delayed his flight into Boston and the show didn’t start until almost 9:30. He came out on stage and did a long, energetic mash-up of Fastlove and I’m Your Man. From there, the show was one non-stop megamix of George Michael’s best songs.

His voice is superb. The production was flawless. His band was stacked vertically on what looked like an enormous spice rack, flanked on both sides by huge screens. In the middle, shaped like a waterfall, was a giant ceiling to stage screen. The screens played a montage of music video footage, light shows and other visuals, including a strip tease from Dita von Teese. Dressed in a black suit, Michael jumped, jived and wailed through his set, occasionally joined at the front of the stage by his back-up singers (6 of them) and other members of his band.

The setlist was straight from his hits album TwentyFive, marking his twenty-fifth recording year. Some songs which really weren’t hits in the states, and he padded the set with a handful of tracks from his breakout solo album Faith. It was all gloriously retro. During Too Funky, Michael resurrected the music video for that song featuring models from that era, including an 18-year-old Tyra Banks.

George Michael was surprisingly gregarious and personable when he talked to the audience. He said, “I know being a George Michael fan hasn’t always been easy” but promised that by the end of the show, “it’s going to get a lot easier.” He explained the footage of Amsterdam taken 10 years ago before singing a soulful rendition of Roxanne.

After the intermission, the set changes between songs started to drag a bit but Michael himself imbued his good spirits into the audience. He asked, “Do you forgive me?” for being late. He introduced Flawless saying it was his gayest album but it also proved to be the moment when the concert’s energy kicked into overdrive. He concluded with two sprawling singalong encores, Careless Whisper and Freedom.

At the end of the night, Michael did something pretty unique for an artist. While the band continued to play Freedom, the production credits rolled across the screen, listing the band, the crew and other people involved in the tour.

George Michael setlist
Waiting (reprise)
Fastlove/I\”m Your Man
Father Figure
Hard Day
Everything She Wants
One More Try
The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face
An Easier Affair
Too Funky
Star People
Intermission/ John and Elvis are Dead
Faith
Spinning the Wheel
Feeling Good
Roxanne
Kissing a Fool
Amazing
Flawless (Go to the City)
Outside
Encore 1
Careless Whisper
Encore 2
Freedom 90

Wao! What a great time! The concert started 1 hour late, but it was so worth the wait! George Michael was as excellent and entertaining as he could ever be. Well Worth my money and time… Would do it again in a heart beat!

Sheryl Crow puts on a show that borders on spiritual. There is so much about her, her personality, her sense of style, her music, that speaks to you almost like a sermon. But what a sermon it is.

Her voice tonight sounded great, despite having a cold that made some of the notes evaporate into the air. She opened her set solo with the guitar in front of a black backdrop, jamming through God Bless This Mess. The full band joined in for a rapturous version of Shine Over Babylon followed by Love is Free, all from the new album Detours which dropped back in February. But after that, she really got done to business with a set riddled with her best, most radio-ready songs. From A Change Will Do You Good and a uplifting version of Can’t Cry Anymore complete with a diversion to I Can See Clearly Now which emphasized the theme of renewal.

After a run through of My Favorite Mistake, Crow kicked the show into another gear. Despite a rambling and completely nonsense spoken word intro to Gasoline (which, contrary to what you might expect, is actually a song about gasoline) the song itself was a serious bit of rock music. As the song built up speed, the band shifted into the Stones’ Gimme Shelter and then harmonized one song on top of the other.

Back to back songs Run Baby Run and a the brief Detours slowed down the pace a bit, and a good chunk of the audience left around that time. So by the time she launched into a stomping, fiery version of Out of Our Heads, the people left in the audience were true fans.

It’s just as well. From Soak Up the Sun through the encore All I Wanna Do, the crowd provided a huge lift of energy. They sang along to every word and damn if we weren’t all converts on a new spiritual plane. Appropriately, the band ended the night with a blistering version of Stevie Wonder’s Higher Ground, each of Crow’s back-up singers taking a turn on lead vocals.

Sheryl Crow setlist
I Can See Clearly Now intro
God Bless This Mess
Shine Over Babylon
Love is Free
A Change Will Do You Good
Leaving Las Vegas
Can’t Cry Anymore / I Can See Clearly Now
Motivation
My Favorite Mistake
Gasoline
There Goes the Neighborhood
Run Baby Run
Detours
Strong Enough
Out of Our Heads
If It Makes You Happy
Soak Up the Sun
Every Day is a Winding Road
Encore
All I Wanna Do
Higher Ground

Bounding on stage in curly locks and playing air guitar before picking up his real one, from the opening song of his hour-long opening set for Sheryl Crow, I wanted to hate James Blunt. He’s smarmy, this one. Everything about his set was overdone, from the fist pumping, the come hithers to the crowd, even jumping into the crowd and skipping along to the back the arena to high-five people in the audience. No song just ended, they all ended with flourish. Ironically, his radio hit You’re Beautiful was the most understated song of the night.

The music wasn’t technically rotten, but there is no getting around his showmanship. Carry You Home was so over the top emotive, it was like licking a romance novel. Same Mistake was better, and in between there were some carefully crafted moments of musical exuberance. He finished the set with 1973, his other hit, which I found moderately tolerable as a live tune (the studio version is like wet newspaper).

Catie Curtis brought her phenomenal singer-songwriter talents to Natick for a homecoming performance of sorts. The Center for Arts in Natick is an intimate stage to play on, where the artists just walk into the room and on to the stage. Accompanied by Kevin Barry, who has played with Paula Cole and Mary Chapin Carpenter, Curtis opened with waggish Slave to My Belly and masterfully ran through a two-hour show that covered many of her most popular songs and new ones from her upcoming release Sweet Life.

In the folk tradition, Curtis peppered every song with commentary, random stories about herself and her family and life as an artist. One story was about a sign on a church bathroom stall door that said “Please flush the toilet behind you.” Sure, it had nothing to do with the song that followed, but nobody in the audience minded even a bit. She explained a name change of the track Are You Ready to Fly? from the new album was because people weren’t taking in the wistful meaning of the original title Teenagers Jumping off the Bridge.

She had her rockin’ moments, notably Kiss That Counted and her softer side, a gorgeous cover of Emmylou Harris’s Red Dirt Girl. Lovely was a track that, as she said, “she wrote in the 20′s” and would have easily fit as a big band tune (or Cole Porter for that matter). Other tracks from the new album, out September 8, The Princess and the Mermaid and Happy were standout moments in an otherwise impressive showcase.

A request from the audience for Dandelion made her react in surprise, “Really?” but she gamely played the song. Towards the end of the night, she played a song for parents of teenagers, Don White’s Be Sixteen with Me. Another request Magnolia Street bookended her main set paired with the doleful Hard Time with Goodbyes.

The encore was two songs. The first, the exquisite Love Takes the Best of You was introduced by Curtis taking requests then concluding “I’ll play a song you’ve never heard.” She finished with Passing Through which ignited a soulful impromptu audience singalong on the chorus.

Chris Trapper strapped on the guitar and launched into a 45 minute warm-up for Catie Curtis with the heartfelt Letter to the Middle of the World. Armed with a raspy, unpolished voice and slight stutter, the lanky performer quickly warmed the crowd to him, wrapping each song in a story. Boston Girl was written after spending a year on the road, about the comforts of coming home. Birthday Song was his answer to singing happy birthday to an audience member. And Wish I Was Cool was every geek’s high school reunion song.

His set transitioned smoothly from folk balladry like Starlight to more uptempo numbers, the best of which Boston Girl left huge smiles around the room. Sure, most of the songs were about that special girl but his awkwardness and utter sincerity made the delivery of each wholly charming.

continuing on in the shoegaze theme, these guys did a nice job musically but there was some disjunct with the vocalist – just didn’t fit – it was either his voice or the sound but think it was the former – maybe the voice was too prevalent in the music and too undreamy

reminded me why I love the shoegaze, with sweet melodies and escapism all wrapped up in fuzzy noise, she basically played songs and they were good but if I were to be a DJ I would mix and mesh a little bit more, something besides standing up there in my cowboy boots and silly dress

guitarist for Heybale (Redd Volkaert\”s band), supposedly influenced by punk, country, etc. but this was straightforward honkytonk, pleasant voice, old-so-good musicians

oozing with dark sexuality, the perfect holy sneer of a voice, fuzzed synthy background music, unfortunate cover of Nine Inch Nail\”s “Hurt” should have been left to wannabes like Johnny Cash, the Bauhaus and otherwise material was perfect

moody prog rock, excessive noodling totally lost the crowd

Swarming to TD Banknorth Garden, Bon Jovi was the like the Pied Piper of white trash. Rarely have I seen so many fake boobs / fake tans / bleach blondes in one place. But it wasn’t just the aging sorority girls that came to party. The crowd also had its share of college jocks, soccer moms and husbands in tow. In all, 18,000 people descended on the Garden for the first of a two-night stand at the tail end of Bon Jovi’s Lost Highway Tour. And they all had two things in common. Everyone was trashed out of their minds and they knew every damn word to every damn song.

Bon Jovi puts on an amazing show. The show was part glam band, part Springsteen and a whole lot of fist pumps and chest hair. Bon Jovi, and in this case I mean the man, does an impressive job of making you feel like you are the only one he’s singing to. It’s a rare talent, even more impressive given the size of the venue and energy level he maintained for almost two hours. He mounted a small stage by himself in the middle of the arena for (You Want To) Make A Memory and Bed of Roses, shaking hands and touching bodies without missing a beat. He did a lot of gyrating on stage the entire night, waving his arms and shimming around the stage. During I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead, the band took a long diversion into Twist & Shout which did nothing to kick the feeling that Bon Jovi would be pretty successful in an exercise video, too.

Whole Lotta Leavin’ was the best of the new material, and followed up by the exhilarating In These Arms, it showed off Bon Jovi’s rich vocals. Richie Sambora looked like ass, but he belted out I’ll Be There For You and his voice sounded great. It hasn’t been a good year for him, I hear, but his guitar sizzled through out the night regardless.

The visuals were mostly kept to a minimum because this was all about the guys themselves. During Bad Medicine, the stage behind the band raised up and made itself into a enormous screen for a mid-song segue into the Isley Brothers’ Shout. Earlier, we also got screen shots of just-short-of-naked coeds, some fireworks and a 1980′s hyper space effect borrowed from George Lucas. But otherwise, the cameras were zeroed in on the guys.

The Garden sold obstructed-view seats behind the stage. For the most part, those fans got a close look at the band and Bon Jovi himself pandered to them as often as not. But occasionally, screens came down from the ceiling to block their view of the stage (though the screens were double-sided so they could see the same thing on the screens that we could…for what it’s worth.) A number of fans paid $1250 for the bonus experience which included side stage standing room only for 3-songs.

The last five songs were the hottest part of the night. The crowd put extra effort into the singalongs Who Says You Can’t Go Home, and Living on a Prayer. Sure, they probably do the same on every tour, but in the end, the night finished on a great high.

Bon Jovi setlist
Lost Highway
Born To Be My Baby
You Give Love a Bad Name
Summertime
Capt. Crash
Runaway
I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead / Twist & Shout
Whole Lot Of Leavin’
In These Arms
Any Other Day
We Got It Goin’ On
It’s My Life
Keep the Faith
I’ll Be There For You
(You Want To) Make A Memory
Bed of Roses
Have A Nice Day
Who Says You Can’t Go Home
Bad Medicine / Shout
Encore
Wanted Dead or Alive
Living on a Prayer