Big Stage, Crap Sound

Sorry, sorry, sorry. We've been too busy with finding a new place to live (a blog in itself at a later date) and work and side effects of medication and stuff.

The biggest event we have attended since the last post was our trip, with the kids, to the U2 concert at the local football stadium. Our local stadium is an indoor dome of a building with a roof that is kept in place by air blown into a serious of inflatable tubes, so if the air handling units that power this were to switch off, the roof would fall down. This is about to be removed for a solid retractable roof.

The stadium holds around 50,000 people in the stands but the stage was at one end and offered a 360 degree view of the band (hence the title of the tour: 360 deg tour - very clever) so the additional people on the pitch took the total audience up to 60,000. U2 had promised to offer a discounted price for 10% of every night on their world tour so our tickets cost $30 each, but we were in the seats at the back of the stage, but still had a good view. I'll qualify that; we had a clear view of the stage and the lights and the hge 360 degree screens above the stage and the band themselves but Bono and the biys were little stick men if you didn't watch them on the screens.

Anyway, we took to kids over the downtown Vancouver and arrived just in time for the support band, The Black Eyed Peas. They are not my favourite band in the world although they were exciting enough in the early, less successful days before Fergie turned up, but since, then they have descended into middle-of-the-road mediocrity in comparison and as a result become millionaires due to a huge increase in their popularity. Honestly, some people have no taste, hence the reason why Maria Carey sells so many records.

So the Black Eyed Peas were OK and tried to cover the huge stage as best as they could but the sound was disappointingly poor - but then the support bands always are. They were on stage for about an hour and jumped up and down and sang and rapped and stood with their arms wrapped around themselves like rappers do and Fergie walked around on unnaturaly severe high heels and a sparkly dress and other dances took to the stage and people cheered and shouted everytime the main fella shouted "Vancouver" and that sort of thing.

Then they left and the stage was cleared and we waited for the main act. David Bowie's Space Oddity started to pump out of the venue speakers and this signelled the imminent arrival of U2. Then they started playing a few of their recent songs and we discovered that the sound "issues" experienced with the support were not exclusive to the support. It was rough, loud and crappy ad it didn't improve as the concert went on. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't sore on the ears but it wasn't great for the expense that they had obviously put into the stage. In fact, here's a comparison for you, it was worse than the sound in the main hall at the SECC in Glasgow. Now that's crap. But the lights and screens and everything was good I suppose and they did play Sunday Bloody Sunday which was good to hear but the biggest issue that night was the fact that the kids were bored stiff throughout. Evie had never been to a concert before but didn't really know U2 and while Josh had been to see the Racontuers a couple of years ago, he was ill and needed to go to bed. We would have happily gone after the second song but we had paid our money and wanted to get some value. We left half way through their first encore so that the kids were in bed at some point before midnight but we certainly won't be going to another concert as a family during school time.

Sadly there's nothing else coming up in Vancouver to talk about so I won't be going to any shows any time soon. Although I got a short shock yesterday when I saw an advert in one of the local papers for a Norah Jones show and the words The Fall under her name. I thought, "surely not". That would be a diverse pairing too far for the Canadian consumers but it excited me for about three seconds until I realised that The Fall is the title of her latest recording. Still, it's worth thinking about. The tour could introduce Mark E Smith to a whole new audience...most of whom would leave the venue before Ravi Shanker's wee girl took to the stage. I fear I would do the opposite. orah Jones is OK if you are in the mood for that type of music and you're not bothered by an album of songs that sound the same all the way through. Imagine what one of her shows would be like.....?

I also noticed this past week that Morrissey has been up to his old falling-over-on-stage tricks again. He collapsed during one show and this has been rescheduled and then at the start of a subsequent concert he was hit in the head by a flying bottle and walked off. Aparently this show is not be rescheduled due to a rather extreme case of sulking. I rember the days when Morrissey fans would try everything to get onto the stage with their hero and he didn't mind that, so why the change now? Of course, he plays larger venues now where the stage is higher and further away, making invasion much more difficult. Actually one fan got onto the stage at the U2 concert and was flattened by a few very large security guards. That will hurt in the morning.