Newcastle, July 31, 1999

By ROBYN YOUNG

chairpage photos

silverchair was due to come on stage at 9:30 p.m. We arrived at the Newcastle Entertainment Centre at 8:30. We thought that Army of Prawns was to start at 8:35, but when we arrived they were nearly finished. We saw only one of their songs.

silverchair would be coming on next, 30 minutes before their scheduled starting time. While waiting for them, we checked out how the new stage setup. It was the best and most interesting stage layout I've ever seen at a silverchair show.

The band's lighting director, Hugh Taranto, designed large arches to be built in the shape of the rounded red neon tubing on the cover of the Neon Ballroom album. There were many mirror balls dangling from the lighting truss above the stage, and the "satellite" from the Anthem video was hanging in the middle.

At 9:05, silverchair took the stage before a packed audience at the NEC. They opened up with Emotion Sickness, which was a good choice to get the crowd pumped up. Israel's Son, another fan favourite, was next -- everyone in the crowd seemed to be into this one, all jumping up and down. Slave was up next, then Abuse Me.

After Abuse Me, Daniel thanked everyone for coming.

"Thanks, Newcastle, it's good to be home," he told the crowd. Next was Ana's Song, which also received a good response from the huge crowd.

The next songs were Suicidal Dream, Paint Pastel Princess, No Association, Madman and Tomorrow, halfway through which they stopped, and Daniel said, "You have all heard this song before, it's our hit!"

Then they went into Miss You Love, then The Door, Pure Massacre and Freak.

After Freak they left the stage, prompting the crowd to cheer, "silverchair! silverchair!" When they came back, Daniel picked up his guitar and played Advance Australia Fair, the country's national anthem. That led into Satin Sheets, and after that came a big surprise.

Daniel announced that some people would be needed to come up on stage and help out with their next song, Anthem for the Year 2000. Of course, members of the audience were anxious to take part, but the security staff was caught off guard.

"Listen to me now, I am the boss," Daniel said. "Don't listen to anyone else! Listen, security, I need people. Get that girl, now we need a guy... a big guy. Come on, security, I need 20 people." He told those 20 people to "get in the cage," which was actually a set of steps on Chris' side of the stage.

One girl was a little too enthusiastic and instead of heading for the "cage," she tried to grab him.

"Let go of me now," he said, "I've dealt with psychos enough this week!"

The people who came on stage were given baseball-type shirts saying, "We are the youth." Daniel prompted the people on stage when to sing "we are the youth," and involved the entire crowd as well. Anthem was great, and everyone participated.

The show was one of the best I'd ever seen. The guys rocked and the crowd was really into it, which made the show more enjoyable. It was great to see the guys in their hometown.

By Travis

Good morning everyone, last night I went to the silverchair show in Newcastle, Australia. All the opening bands were pretty good. The third band was the best openers! They had a Fatih No More sound to them, and the guitar player was kinda like Tom Morello from Rage Against The Machine. Daniel's brother band was the last of the 5, he kept going on about how he thinks they were better then silverchair, but at the end he admited that they aren't nowhere near as good.