Hordern = not so good. It is my least favourite venue for shows, because in its supposed egalitarianism of all GA it just damns short people like me, and for some reason the worst crowds I've ever encountered have all been at the Hordern. But I saw half the Ground Components set with Alison and her friends and I quite enjoyed them; Fiona had told us beforehand that they were “scream-y, but with good melodies” and it was true, but she forgot to mention the screaming was done by an Iggy Pop lookalike over catchy rockabilly tunes (this is a plus).
In between the sets I went and hung out with some other friends right of centre, in the thick of the mosh. The crowd was uniformly tall and hulking, with lots of very excited/drunk/high guys, and it was getting pretty rough in the wait for Muse. People kept asking me, “Are you sure you’re going to be ok?” I thought I was going to be fine...in the end, I lasted in the mosh for the first four songs, then my glasses flew off my face (ACK!!!!!) After rescuing them, I decided that I was sick of bracing myself against giant frat boy types who were threatening to fall on me en masse every other moment and made my way out towards the side. But before that, someone dumped a beer over the crowd near me during the second song, so I smelt like beer and sweat for the rest of the night, which earned me lots of dirty looks from other girls during the concert, understandably. I ended on the far right, about 6 rows from the front but so so far away from Matt Bellamy. *sadface* I did have fun dancing around like crazy and moshing in that area though; it was good that the energy levels were so crazy that the mosh was fairly far reaching actually, and where I was there were lots more short happy fans and it was a comfortable, fun mosh rather than a violent experience. But there was the only one moment during the gig that I got a decent view of the band, when I had a rest on the steps to the seats before a security guard forced me to move, which is partly why I can't say I had the best concert experience; while the music was awesome, I just felt like I came away with almost no sense of the band as a visual experience since most of the night all I saw were sweaty shoulders, hair and more heads. I normally don’t have this much to say about the mechanics of being on the floor at a concert, but I felt a lot of what I felt about Tuesday night stemmed from that – the good and the bad.
Musically, I didn't have any qualms about the gig at all. It was pretty damn spectacular. I love the first four songs played but I had very little recollection of them because of the aforementioned mosh shenanigans. They followed that up with 'Feeling Good', and it is the classiest rock rendition of a great Nina Simone song, and then they followed that with 'Hoodoo' and it sounded so so good, with the intense piano chords and giant sound. The whole night, they sounded MASSIVE and awesome live. Even though it’s just the three of them on stage, it was so strong and powerful, whether it was the ballads with Matt's unbelievable voice, or the rock songs pounding out.
The first encore was the real highlight though. When they came back out, Matt said that we should all get our lighters and mobile phones out for 'Soldier’s Poem', but in my area we were all giggling because this person had a lighter that was more like a flamethrower, it threw out these massive tongues of fire and you could see the owner getting their thumb burnt over and over again, but he kept doing it and we really appreciated the spectacle. Then the energy levels went through the roof with 'Hysteria' and 'Stockholm Syndrome' back to back, again tight and fast and insane, and yeah, I enjoyed this mosh. “Second” encore was just fun, with a crowd karaoke singalong to Knights of Cydonia, so tongue-in-cheek and enjoyable live, ending the on a high energy note.
Take A Bow
Map Of The Problematique
Butterflies And Hurricanes
Supermassive Black Hole
Newborn
Starlight
Forced In
Bliss
Feeling Good
Hoodoo
Invincible
Time Is Running Out
Plug In Baby
Soldier's Poem
Hysteria
Stockholm Syndrome
Knights Of Cydonia
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