Last night I saw Ben Harper at the Sydney Entertainment Centre. I have never liked the entertainment centre as a music venue because of its size and sound quality. I was seated to the left of the stage 3/4 of the way up and the sound was appalling. The bass was really boomy and was all you could hear. It totally drowned out the other instruments and Ben Harper’s voice. The only songs that sound good were a couple near the end with Ben Harper performing solo on stage using an acoustic guitar.
Leaving aside the bad sound, Ben Harper spent over 2.5 hours and stage, performing 2 encores . It virtually got to the stage where the crowd were happy to go home but Ben kept playing. The most memorable song of the night was “With my own two hands” which really got the crowd going. The percussionist Leon was dancing up a storm and I am pretty sure the keyboard player had some sort of Moog synthesiser on top of his Hammond organ.