Take That @ Wembley Stadium, 4th & 5th July 2009

Back For Good? Most definitely!

So, continuing my 90’s nostalgia trip, I went to see the last 2 dates of the Take That Circus tour. Both nights were very different experiences but both amazing – on Saturday I went as a grown up and sat in the seats at the back, and on Sunday I became the teenager I never was and joined the queue outside Wembley in the morning to get to the front barrier and see the show up close, but more of that later.

Supporting Take That was my favourite singer/songwriter Gary Go, and as Wembley is essentially his home turf, I was expecting a great show. On Saturday I had a great view of the whole stadium and I have to say I was incredibly excited to see him playing to such a big audience (especially as the last time I saw him play there were probably about 30 people there (Cambridge, 30/05/09), so the step up to about 20,000 was a big one). It was obvious that a lot of the people up in the stands didn’t know his music but hopefully I didn’t put them off by singing along to all the songs. I was really impressed with how he and the band filled the stage – Gary sounded really confident and the music was great. The set list was the same on both nights:

Open Arms
So So
Engines
Black And White Days
Life Gets In The Way
Heart and Soul
Wonderful

I have to admit that my attendance on Sunday and the associated queuing was all in support of MrG…myself and the other self-styled Go Go Girls with banners in tow wanted to see him on the stadium stage and let him know that he had some of his own fans in the house. Queuing from 6am (I have to admit that I joined in a little later but I did bring biscuits) secured us a place at the front barrier but it was every man (or should I say woman) for themselves when the doors opened – TT fans can be vicious!! So saying we met some really nice people in the queue, some of whom were converted GG fans after seeing him play at other dates on the tour. And seeing him play from the front was even better, although we didn’t have a great view of the rest of the band because of the set up of the stage. All I can say is that Gary deserves to be very successful and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that one day he will be playing Wembley again on his own tour (Gary – if you’re reading this please have a thought for the Go Go Girls when this happens and make sure that we can get tickets before it sells out LOL!). On both nights after the show I overheard other people comparing him to Bono and U2, which is a pretty high accolade. Looking around in cyberspace I know that Gary has gained a lot of new fans through this tour so fingers crossed for his new single, which is out later this month.

The second support act on both nights was Lady GaGa and I have to say that the slot has just confirmed to me that she is really not my cup of tea. I understand from my new friends I made in the queue that she was booed from the front on Saturday (although to be fair I couldn’t hear it at the back) for her no show in Manchester, and I think it may have put her off her stride as she certainly spent a lot of time saying how happy she was to be on tour with Take That. While I like Poker Face and Just Dance I just think that she is too much of a show off for me and there is something about her that I find to be intensely annoying. There’s no doubt that she can sing, but 3 costume changes for a support act is just over the top and she milks the crowd something rotten. I took the opportunity on Saturday to go and get a drink while she was on but unfortunately that’s not an option when you are packed in at the front so I just stood looking a bit bored – I didn’t even take any pictures of her! For any ardent GaGa fans reading this – I can see why she’s so popular but she’s just not for me.

Now, on to the main event. Although I liked Take That back in the 90’s I was never a huge fan – certainly not one of the many who needed the emergency phone like when the band broke up – and I didn’t get to see them live until their come back tour in 2006, and I have to say that it was one of the best concerts I have ever been to. It was in Wembley Arena, the atmosphere was fantastic and the show itself was completely breathtaking – and I thought it would be a challenge to beat that. But I’m pleased to say that the band managed to surpass themselves and what was lost in having a larger, more open space to fill was more than made up by the huge spectacle that we were treated to. The people who staged the show need some kind of medal as it was incredible – just absolutely massive and very very beautiful. Sitting up at the back for the first night gave me a real sense of the scale of the thing and the overall impression that they created, while being at the front on Sunday meant that I was just a lot closer to the action and I embraced my inner screaming fan when the band were right in front of us. For a complete picture I really needed to have done a third night near the B stage but 2 nights is probably good enough ;-)

But anyway, the highlights of the show are almost too many to list (but I’ll try…):

1. The Elephant, which was worked by people hanging off it and just looked brilliant. I wouldn’t like to be the person being the tail though, they had to stay upside down for about 20 minutes!


2. The Clown sequence when they made themselves up as clowns and then unicycled down the middle – the colours were amazing and it was just so much fun


3. All the circus performers and dancers were fantastic – there was a guy who went round in a wheel who was astonishing, along with a tight rope walker, trampoliners (is that a word??), trapeze artists, stilt walkers, hula hoopers – you name it, they had it


4. The show included both rain (all the people near the B stage get wet I think) and fire – you could feel the heat from the flames right at the back on Saturday and I thought I was going to burn my eyebrows off at the front on Sunday – it was HOT!


5. The songs they sang (and those they didn’t) showed what an extensive back catalogue they have. Gary gave a taster of some of their old stuff that they didn’t play including Babe sitting at the piano, which was a really nice touch


6. The boy band has truly become a man band – less dancing and no break dancing (which they were still doing in 2006) but instead a whole section where they played their own instruments as a ‘proper’ band


7. Never Forget. 80,000+ people (including the crew) doing the arms in the air thing feels incredible

All in all a brilliant weekend – they were filming for the tour DVD while I was there so I can’t wait to get a copy of that. Having seen Britney Spear’s version of the Circus (you can read my review of that here) all I can say is that you can give me Take That version any day – there really isn’t any comparison.


Engines, Gary Go’s third single from his debut album, is out on July 20th

Circus – The DVD is hopefully out soon...

Britney Spears @ The O2 Arena, London, 11th June 2009

Britney. Meh.



It’s probably worth saying that I’m not a massive Britney fan but I managed to blag a free ticket from work for one of her many dates at the O2 and it seemed silly not to go. I really like some of her bigger hits (Toxic, Piece Of Me) and I did buy Hit Me Baby One More Time on CD single back in 1998 so I’d describe myself as a casual fan – I don’t have any of her albums but if I’d been impressed with the gig I would have bought one.

To let the cat out of the bag on this one, I am still a non-owner of a Britney Spears album.

The set up for this tour promoting her latest album, The Circus was built unsurprisingly around a circus theme with Britney as the ring master. In terms of the actual stage, the whole set up of the venue had been changed to accommodate performance in the round, with the main stage moved into the centre of the arena with the audience all around. This was a genius move from my personal perspective as it meant that the corporate box we were in half way down the arena had a fantastic view. It did mean that there were no big screens showing in close up what was going on – some uncharitable people have suggested that this is because it would have been too obvious that she was miming – but the people sat up in level 4 would have struggled to identify which of the small gnats running about on the stage was actually Britney. Also, as she was moving from one ring to another the people at each end of the arena probably had a less than ideal view.

I presume most of the material that was performed in the set was from her most recent albums as I only knew a few songs. As I’ve mentioned previously, I can find gigs where I don’t know the songs to be a bit boring – and I’m sorry to say that this was a definite case of this. There was lots of dancing and circus tricks and the like, but somehow it all got lost in the vast space of the auditorium and just didn’t come across as being that impressive. It felt like a well rehearsed routine rather than an individual show – I hear that when she went up to Manchester she said “hello London” to the crowd, which obviously went down well. I have to say that the couple of songs she played that I knew I really enjoyed – Toxic was great, and she proved that she actually could sing (whilst sitting) when she did Everytime so I’m not sure why she didn’t do more of it.



When the set finished there was no cheering for an encore and when the lights came up the seats in the arena were empty. And I mean, completely empty. People obviously didn’t feel like it was worth staying for any more songs and I can’t say I blame them. The show was quite a spectacle but didn’t make a lasting impact. I can only hope that the Take That version of the Circus contains a bit more fibre…