The Cold Cut

I hope that many members of the blogosphere tuned in for the Concert For Diana last night, which was excellent, both in terms of its message and the huge amount of bands who turned out in a tribute to the Princess Of Wales. It's also really important to recognize the huge amount of effort put in by Princes Harry and William, who managed to sort out a diverse program which included music (of all sorts: rap, rock and hip-hop), ballet, comedy and drama. Its great that they have managed to pull it off successfully, and the whole night was spectacular, from the huge stage and venue to the great performances by all the acts involved.

The acts performing included Nelly Furtado, P. Diddy, Joss Stone, The Feeling and Rod Stewart: the stand-outs for me were Elton John (of course!), James Morrison (very impressive live), Lily Allen (she actually can sing!) and Kanye West. Kanye's seven minute set was like nothing I have ever seen; he blitzed through all of his best songs, paying tribute to Diana but not making it too cheesy. He also performed his great new single, Stronger, which only gets better when performed live. Wearing a tweed suit and some very weird sunglasses, West ran about the stage, breaking a sweat and putting 110% into his performance.

All in all, the Concert For Diana was highly worthwhile: Diana was and still is one of the most important popular icons of the last century, and its great that she can be remembered through performances by some of her favorite bands, such as Duran Duran.

Never in my life has a band tortured me this way... Whilst doing work experience at Comic Relief last week, a little email popped up stating someone in the office was offering two excellently positioned standing tickets to Muse's opening night performance at Wembley Stadium. And the price? £45 each. That might seem expensive to some, but considering the prices for tickets on eBay are £300 a pair they were actually very cheap considering the gigs were literally days away. I was so tempted to ditch going back to school the next day in order to see these guys again; I really thought that the cheap tickets were a bit of a sign.

Well, of course I ended up turning down the tickets and traveling back to boring old Cheltenham the next day. But this hasn't stopped me from watching numerous Youtube videos and listening to live recordings of the two concerts. I've read people's thoughts on the performance and most quotes have been along the lines of "the best gig I've ever seen in my life" or "unbelievable". The thing that makes Muse so different is their sound is no different playing in a small venue of 1000 people as they are playing in stadium venues like Wembley to crowds upwards of 20000; of course stadium performances are more of a spectacle (see image at end of post) but this band is just as comfortable in either situation. I've watched many of the songs featured in their 2-hour long set and I can't wait for some good quality footage to be shown on TV. Anyway, I've included a live recording of Map Of The Problematique during the Saturday performance, which is being released as a single later this week.

Muse- Map Of The Problematique (Live At Wembley).mp3