'Mercury Lounge'
Melbourne's 'Crown Casino'

This wasn't an official tour concert, just promotional for Julian's new CD - Photograph Smile so it was pretty badly advertised. Good for us though, it meant less people and less of a crush. The Mercury Lounge itself is quite a small venue at any rate.

My friend Cindy and I got there at about 6:45 PM and lined up. There were one or two in front of us - about 8 people (and I swear one of them looked like David Letterman). They'd been there since 2pm :)~ The moment we lined up about 50 other people magically appeared behind us.

We waited till about 7:30 PM when the doors opened and we went in. We grabbed our front row standing position (my camera safely hidden in Cindy's jacket).




Now at the time I didn't know where we standing...even though we peaked under the curtain a few times to see what was going on. So when the curtains came up my didn't we get a surprise. We were leaning on the amps that belonged to a certain singer/songwriter's mic.

So out walks the band - Julian's English band I believe - and we're all chanting "we want Julian" and then, finally, the man himself walks out - and stands about a foot away from Cindy and me. He started the set with "Day after Day" I think, and went through a few songs from Photograph Smile which was a great song in itself. "And She Cries" and "I Should Have Known" were amongst these. Then he went on to play a couple more standards (um is he old enough to have standards?) like "Too Late For Good-byes" and "Saltwater" which was probably the most popular song of the night since everybody knew the words. We all sang - he looked at us *gg*.

Then he finished...well not quite..."encore" I yelled..."encore" Cindy yelled "encore" everyone yelled. This turned into "Julian" *clapclapclap* and out he came for one last number..."Stand By Me"... It was brilliant...the whole concert was...and yes, I did get to touch him (well grab his hand really, poor man). His theme for the night and quite possibly for his life was "if you want something done properly you have to do it yourself"

We all had a great night and we're waiting for the REAL tour now :)