There was one fairly heartwarming, and as it turns out prophetic comment on the ole’ Tweeters last night as Crowded House brought their glorious four-night stand on the steps of the Sydney Opera House to a close.
Not only was the concert for the enjoyment of the 5,000-odd that crammed themselves into the Opera House forecourt for the closing night of the legendary and hugely beloved band’s ARIA Hall of Fame reunion stand, but an entire country’s worth of lounge rooms was also able to tune in, thanks to a live broadcast orchestrated by the ABC.
During the show, Double J‘s resident lead scribe Dan Condon mused on the concept of so many people all watching the set simultaneously:
The world doesn’t seem so bad when you realise hundreds of thousands of people are currently singing along to #CrowdedHouseLive
— Dan Condon (@doncandon) November 27, 2016
Turns out Condon was right on the money.
The OzTAM ratings for Sunday night are slowly filtering in this morning, and the live broadcast is officially a winner for Aunty as far as viewership goes.
Some 643,000-odd people across the nation tuned in for the special event, marking 20 years since the band famously played a farewell show on that very same spot back in 1996.
That’s well over a half-a-million people who, in the middle of a year of otherwise brow-furrowing global turmoil and tragedy, sat down in their lounge rooms to sing along to a bunch of remarkably effective pop songs written by a bunch of weirdo Kiwis who never saw an unorthodox chord structure they didn’t like.
643,000 Australian viewers all getting a little bit teary as Neil Finn belted out the final few bars of ‘Better Be Home Soon‘ before fireworks lit up the Sydney night sky behind the Opera House.
In a year where good news has apparently been somewhat hard to come by, that’s a real bloody nice little thought, isn’t it.
If you were among those who tuned in, we hope you had a real special night with it. We know we did.
And if you missed it, the whole thing is still up to be streamed on demand via the ABC’s Facebook page, as well as on ABC iView.
Crowdies forever. <3
Source: Perth Now.
Photo: Mark Metcalfe/Getty.
