racingmeridian.com

After having traveled thousands of miles over the course of four decades to see Elton John in every type of situation imaginable, you can forgive me if I had thought there was nothing new under the sun, so to speak.

Wrong.

I’d never been to Hamilton.

Oh man, watching Elton valiantly trying to stir up a collection of zombies at Copps last night was painful. The singer was in rare form, sounding fantastic and playing with zeal and conviction.

But the collection of yokels and slack jawed sewer rats that comprised the crowd last night was, for the most part, immobile and stunned. No wait, that’s unless the cretins were making one of their many visits to the beer concessions.

There was a remarkable lack of buzz in the crowd before the show. Usually an Elton John crowd is just dripping with excitement and anticipation. Indeed, my companion remarked it was the creepiest concert crowd he’d ever seen. They were a step above pajamas and bathrobes but certainly showed none of the decorum and accessorizing that normally accompanies an Elton John show.

Copps is a tiny, dull stadium remarkably lacking a single escalator. Concrete steps abound as you walk through an almost Lilliputian version of a regular hockey arena. The seats are cramped and awkwardly situated low to the ground. (Colour me Bettman in terms of this shithole ever hosting an NHL team).

Elton took the stage at 8.04pm, and at every concert I’ve seen in the past twenty years, people are seated awaiting the show. In Hamilton the boozers were still streaming in half an hour after the show had begun, blocking views and slurring while trying to find their seats. I was appalled that they would not await the end of a song before entering, but those types of manners and respect for your fellow fans was completely absent. The majority in attendance would have been far better off spending the night at one of the decrepit, dingy watering holes that pockmarks the town like pus ridden zits on an adolescent’s greasy face.

It was the first concert of Elton’s I’ve attended where he did not address the crowd during the show. He must have been horrified looking out at a scene from “Night of the Living Dead”.

He deftly sliced Sad Songs and (damn) Sacrifice from the set list, but still played for over two and a half hours.

He clearly made a mistake by not coming to Toronto, where slavish fans turn his shows into electric recreations of the seventies.

I imagined him leaving the stage and saying, in reference to the decision to play Steeltown, “Well, that was a fucking mistake”.

Elton John is scheduled to play Toronto in February and I would advise anyone horrified by last nights crowd to attend those shows. They’ll be passionate and magical, with the crowd singing along to every song.

As for Hamilton, I can truly say I spent a week there one night. The place is good for driving through, I won’t make the mistake of stopping again…