I had the chance to see Ben Folds at the Klein Auditorium in Bridgeport tonight. Great show, although some songs were strange without their orchestrations. The crowd just had to make up for it.

Paul McCartney.. Billy Joel.. an all-access pass and a front row seat. It all started when I saw this message from @Stereogum:

“Paul McCartney starts his three nights at Citi Field this evening. He’s making a film and he needs some help from all of you young filmmakers out there. We are looking for thirty people to shoot each show, July 17, 18 & 21, on Flip cameras. We have the cameras, all we need is the talent!”

I replied, and then while driving towards New York I received an email letting me know I had been selected to participate.  My friend Mindy and I showed up at the 1st Base VIP entrance where we picked up our “Working Personel” passes and a custom Paul McCartney Flip Cam, and then set off to roam the stadium at our pleasure.

I found myself nice spot in the front row, a few feet in front of Pierce Brosnan and nearby Nancy Shevell.

Here’s a video (shot with my iPhone) of Paul singing “A Day in the Life” and “Give Peace a Chance”.

Read on for the set list and a few photos:

I came across some really good footage from the Paul McCartney show I attended this past June.  It’s shot from right about where I was standing.  In fact, I think I can hear my friends voice on the video.  Anyway, enjoy.

Blackbird:

I’ll Follow the Sun (Intro):

I’m back from the Paul McCartney concert!  Time for the recap:

Let me go back a few weeks to explain this.  About a month ago I
found out that Paul McCartney would be doing some type of live
performance in NYC to promote his new album Memory Almost Full.  Any
large-scale world tour would be postponed to next year due to "personal
issues" (his divorce from Heather Mills).  So being a huge Beatles/Paul
McCartney fan, I did some intense research until I found out the
details of what would be going down.

I found out that the show was going to be a small-scale "secret"
show about two weeks ago and that I’d have to win tickets through a
radio station contest in order to go.  Only a few hundred contest
winners and invited guests would be given tickets.  So after looking
through the websites of nearly every FM radio station from the
country’s major cities, I finally found a contest where you could enter
a raffle to win tickets by correctly answering 20 questions about
Paul.  I didn’t win.  But my friend Steph did, and she offered to take
me.  Amazingly, my friend Bret won as well and offered to take my
brother Justin.  So now we had 3 people from CT’s smallest town attending a concert that thousands of people from around the world were trying to go to, and I was one of them.

More below the cut.