The Year of Jacky Cheung World Tour 2007 Melbourne Concert

Despite being slightly under the weather, I was not going to miss my Jacky Cheung concert for anything. Jacky Cheung is my all time favourite Chinese singer. I've been following his career for many years and have a huge selection of his albums and concert DVDS. It's not often that we get to see him live living here in Australia. I was so angry at myself for missing his last concert in Melbourne 4-5 years ago. This time, I made sure I got tickets early (well Technically Kevin bought them) so I wouldn't miss out. So a group of us, all Jacky fans to varying extent, went along to the concert at Vodafone arena yesterday night.

After opting out of joining the queue into the Melbourne Park car park, we found a very nice empty free car park space next to the Richmond Footy Club House building. We then did our impression of a "Prison Break" dash across the empty MCG grass areas as we were running late. We actually arrived on time but the show still hadn't started. After some confusion as to whether we were sitting in row T or U and getting in and out of our seats 3 times, we finally settled into our seats. We had fantastic seats, about 45 degrees from the stage and right in the middle tier. It only cost $59 and was a much better view than when I was on the ground floor watching the Kylie Minogue concert for $149. We also got these inflatable thundersticks which are all the rage now and Patrick blew them up for everyone.

When the music started, the crowd went burserk and started to clap the thundersticks together. We got right into it as well and started cheer like mad. Jacky made a grand entrance and kicked off into some high energy dance numbers. He has definitely improved his dancing of late. He's still not the best dancer by far, but he did quite good this time, dancing around while singing wonderfully. He did have one bad note, but that was probably the only bad note he sang all night. Here is one of his dance songs below.

He then talked to the audience a bit after he had sung a few songs. Initially he started to talk in Mandarin, but a poll of the audience as to whether he should speak in Cantonese or Mandarin got an overwhelming response that it should be Cantonese. So he simply switched over to Cantonese and continued on with the show.

Jacky then proceeded to sing some new songs from his latest album. This got a fairly good response, but since most people didn't know the words too well, sat back and listened. When he went into some more classic songs, the house erupted. Everyone sang along. He also dedicated some songs to his wife and kids, and we found out some info about him, such as how his family are all fisherman, he wrote an album by himself for his daughter and that he started in the industry by winning a singing contest.

He tried to cater for both his Cantonese and Mandarin crowds by choosing a mixture of songs from both languages. I enjoyed them both as I listen to both types, but a couple of friends were like "why is he singing Mandarin". I said that times are changing and the Mandarin crowd from China is now a force that must be catered to. Anyway, the show rolled on at a fantastic energy and Jacky was singing and dancing. He only took small quick costume change breaks, but otherwise did not stop all night. A lot of the fast songs, he was accompanied by dancers, but with the slow songs, it was just him and his voice capturing all of us.

I had my binoculars and could see Jacky clearly. His facial expressions are always great to watch. He closes his eyes a lot and makes these rather strange looking faces when he sings. It's just his style. If you look closely at the photo below and view the largest size, you can see what I mean about his face.

After doing some classic songs, Jacky gave us a small section of the "Snow Wolf Lake" musical that he was in. The story of the musical, as far as I could tell, was about a fight between two guys over the love of a lady. The other guy wins out, and Jacky then kills him and the girl. The girl doesn't die and wakes to find the other guy dead. She mourns for him and shuns Jacky. It was a really engrossing musical. I was captivated the whole time and watched in silence with the occasional clap in between. However, having said that, I felt they should have shortened it even more for the concert. It didn't really fit in with the rest of the show. If people wanted to see Snow Wolf Lake, they would go watch that instead. This portion of the show did highlight how great Jacky's voice is. Most of the songs were slow songs with just him singing his heart out. The clarity and richness of his voice is unbelievable. It's no wonder he can still be at the top of the Chinese music scene after 23 years. I looked on the concert tour official website and he's doing like 100 shows in 40 cities. He started at February this year in Las Vegas and will end the tour with encore shows in Hong Kong in January next year. His popularity is still as high as ever.

After the Snow Wolf Lake part, Jacky did a few more new songs from his latest album. He then did a couple of old classics and that was supposedly it. He and the crew took their bows.

Some people were getting out of their seats and were starting to rush off already. However, we knew that wasn't it. The crowd went totally nuts and were so loud, clapping and calling for an encore. Slowly, the drums started to beat and the "doof doof" beating got louder and faster. Jacky then re-emerged and waved to the crowd. He put his hands to his ears and asked if we wanted more. Of course we did.

He then started to sing classic song after classic song. It was just him, a microphone and his voice. Everyone knew all the songs and sang along. Here is a video of "Love you more each day" below.

He did an hour of this solo singing, and the crowd was with him the whole time. Every time he went to one side, that side of the crowd would go crazy. We were shouting so much and it was so loud, my ears were being overloaded with noise. He did some of my all time favourite songs such of his, and people were singing along at the top of their voices during the chorus sections. Some songs even had lyrics up on the big screen like a massive crowd karaoke. He was totally entertaining and talking to the crowd in a very relaxful presence throughout. People kept cheering for more after each song and he kept singing. Finally, after about 3 and 1/4 hours of non stop singing, he left us with a final song "Friends, I always wish you the best".

This concert was totally awesome and such great value for money. The Sammi Cheng concert that I went to last time was at Crown Palladium where the atmosphere was non-existent, the stage was tiny, the audio hideous and the view terrible. I paid like $100 for that. This concert was fantastic, with Jacky working the crowd beautifully, his voice stunning, the view was great and the atmosphere electric. I literally got goosebumps at some parts where the noise was unimagineable. Should Jacky ever come back to Australia, I will be going to see his concert again for sure. I will also buy this DVD if it comes out.