It was perhaps his smallest audience for nearly two decades.
On November 23 last year Neil Finn played in the Crowded House farewell concert at the Opera House before 250,000 people.
This month it was different. Finn’s audience was not even 250, barely 25. He was sitting outside hut in the tiny village of Bhu My near Da Nang, Vietnam, playing to a bunch of children. But the two concerts had something in common. Both were charitable. In November it was a children’s hospital and blood bank. Bhu My village was also being visited by people from the Fred Hollows Foundation, monitoring work done to restore sight to people with cataract blindness. Finn is a member of the foundation in New Zealand — something he does not sing about.
Earlier, Finn played at the largest Australia Day celebration outside Australia — in Ho Chi Minh City, along with Mark Seymour of Hunters and Collectors, Finn’s son Liam, aged 14, doing his first major gig (drums), some quickly cobbled together local backing and a couple of ring-in Australians, Mark Bowyer (guitar) and Neil Lawrence (harmonica). The 3000 people enjoyed some gutsy and mellow numbers in the benefit concert for the foundation.
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