Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 11:42 am Post subject: muse @ wembley
just thought I'd share this with you guys as it's still filling my brain:
I saw Muse on Saturday at the new Wembley stadium. What a fckn day!
First off, Muse were just awesome. That three fellas can spew out a noise like that, is just astonishing.
The support acts were pretty good as well. Dirty Pretty Things were a little bit ploppy, but Rodrigo y Gabriela were hella impressive, and even The Streets were a lot of fun.
When Muse came on though, they appeared from a raised platform in the middle of the audience while Prokofiev’s Dance of the Knights played deafeningly loud. There was an explosion of sparks, smoke and confetti, and then there they were. As they walked across this catwalk to the main stage, they were flanked by about 100 guys in Hazmat suits – all the while on the stage these enormous satellites were jerking around, firing out pulses of light. It was amazing.
The whole gig was brill, although the sound quality was a bit patchy in places – however you could still hear the vocals and Matt Bellamy’s unbelievable guitar solos absolutely fine.
There were three enormous video walls and all kinds of little tricks throughout the show. Each time he wanted a new guitar, a little neon blue robot zipped onto the stage carrying his new axe. His piano was fitted with a load of giant florescent organ pipes, each one lit a different colour depending on which note was played.
They did their usual thing of throwing out 20-odd giant inflatable balls filled with confetti. Later in the night, while they played a couple of slower songs, these two HUGE white balloons, that had before this been flashing different colours in time with the music, turned blue and began to rise out above the audience. Attached underneath each one was an acrobat, who turned somersaults and threw showers of glitter over the crowd as the balloons soared and bobbed over the entire audience.
Anyway…
After two encores the show finished, and then it just got stupid.
The five minute walk up Wembley Way to the tube station took more than an hour and a half. I guess there were about 50,000+ trying to get there so the pavement was packed. However the presence of hundreds of police on horseback, funnelling people into tiny channels really didn’t help matters either.
So, there we were, shuffling forwards, being rained on the whole time, completely aware that we were missing train after train back to my brother David's place in Colchester.
When we finally got into the tube station, there was one tube left. It was already quite full when we got in, but another kagillion piled on anyway. It was hell man – sooo hot and packed, girls were fainting all over the place, and more people were trying to get on at each stop even though it was abundantly clear that there wasn’t room enough for those that were already on.
Anyway…
This was the last tube of the night. It arrived at the station two minutes AFTER the last train home of the night. Isn’t that a little bit thick? Shouldn’t they be co-ordinated? Or shouldn’t there have been some communication between stations to say ‘hmmm, there seem to be thousands and thousands and thousands more people that usual – maybe delay things a little bit?...’
What a complete abortion.
So anyway – after sprinting from the tube to the train platform, only to see our train snaking away into the distance, I realised that we were stranded. Shit.
Hotel? According to the station staff dere ain’t nuffink like dat roun’ ere.
Okay – hire car. I’ll drive back to Colchester. Apparently dere ain’t nuffink like dat roun’ ere either. Fckn useless bunch of spastics.
It’s about 1:30am now. My brother remembers that he’s got a friend who lives nearby. So he calls him to ask if we can crash at his. We can, so his friend Nick jumps into his car and comes over to Stanford to pick us up, an hour later me and Rachel are in a single bed in a box room, while this lad is sleeping on the sofa so David and his girlfriend can have his bed. Nice fella. About 3am we’re able to get some sleep.
At 7:30 we’re woken up and told that we have to be out by eight because this lad is going to work.
Four hours sleep, more bloody tube and train tickets because we obviously couldn’t use our returns tickets from the day before because the London train system is a shambles, and we get back to David’s. After sleeping in our clothes and feeling like shit, me and Rachel just drive home. And today I feel like crap.
indeed - a friend of mine once slept standing up in a phonebox in tunbridge wells after getting stranded by uncoordinated trains after a gig (although his drunkeness probably didn't help matters either)
a friend has just told me a story about one night he went to watch the WWF in Birmingham and missed his train, so walked to to the nearest hotel bar, and ended up having drinks with Andre the Giant, the British Bulldog, Ric Flair, Owen Hart and the Undertaker - although he was too scared to talk to the Undertaker, even though he was doing shots with The Big Bossman, who he had just beaten earlier in the evening.
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