Tag: Blurry Gig Photos

Gig Review: Holly Johnson at The Glasshouse (Sage Gateshead), 12th November 2023

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On we go with the gig blog catchup!

I really enjoyed this gig… well, I remember I did once the main act came on. There was a support act, which I only know because I took a picture. The old listing from the Glasshouse website tells me his name is Matt McManoman, but I’m afraid he was most likely doing the kind of acoustic stuff that my memory tends not to retain:

I’m also basing this assumption on the acoustic guitar.

Sorry, Matt. If I see you again I’ll try harder to remember your set!

Onto Holly. Setlist recorded by the good folks at setlist.fm. It was a perfect list as far as I was concerned, with a great mix of Frankie classics and solo highlights. Holly also had some great stories about Newcastle back in the ’80s when he used to come up to record The Tube.

Best photo I could get due to (a) my rubbish camera (b) my nonexistent photography skills (c) the particular stage lighting for this gig.

The encore was one song – ‘The Power of Love’ – which Holly said he believes shouldn’t just be a Christmas song but should be played year-round. I see his point, but seeing this lovely performance of the song in the run-up to Christmas did feel pretty special.

Onto 2024 next week! We’re getting there…

Gig Review: Duran Duran at BST Hyde Park, 10th July 2022

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Shortly after the Dublin gig, I was off to see Duran Duran again!

I was in London on my own for this one so arrived fairly early for the day-long BST event (Duran were headlining) as I didn’t really have anything else to do. None of the music acts during the afternoon caught my interest, and it was a very hot day (one of those days I feel a bit wistful for currently, writing this from the middle of winter!), so I took the opportunity to chill with my picnic blanket under a tree, enjoy food from the festival stalls, read a book and people-watch. (All the girls were in Veja trainers that summer. That is a very strong memory.)

This was my view for most of the day:

I did venture out to catch a bit of Chic and Nile Rodgers, but the sun was still pretty strong so I retreated back to my tree. I knew Nile would be back on stage with Duran later on!

Thankfully it was a lot cooler by the time the main set started. We were very much in the Future Past era at this point, so the setlist was similar to Dublin (London setlist available on setlist.fm here), but the vibe was very different – equally lovely, but somehow more energetic. I was a long way back in the crowd (BST had a large VIP section so unless you were paying through the nose you couldn’t get anywhere near to the stage) but everyone around me was there to dance. It was a great atmosphere. (And Nile came out as expected to join the band for ‘Notorious’ and ‘Pressure Off’!)

It was dark by the time the band finished and a big crush to get out of Hyde Park… but such a buzz and so worth the trip down to London!

Gig Review: Duran Duran at St Anne’s Park Dublin, 12th June 2022

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This was another COVID-postponed gig, and turned into a bit of a nightmare with the postponed logistics, especially as at some point Geth decided to come along for his birthday weekend. It was a flying visit to Dublin in the end but I really enjoyed it!

It was a bit of a festival atmosphere in St Anne’s Park – love an outdoor gig in the summer. The first support act was Sinead O’Brien. Simon came out to introduce her (something, he claimed, that he’d never done for a support act before). I recall her music being fairly chilled out and a good way to start the show.

A return to blurry gig photography, sorry. Hopefully this will improve over the next few gig review catchups as our phone cameras get better.

The middle act was Goldfrapp, a band that I always quite enjoyed in their hit days, so it was good to have the opportunity to see them.

I think this picture might have been taken of the big screen rather than the band themselves!

In between the acts, it rained a lot 😒 and we made good use of the various plastic bags we’d brought with us.

I tweeted about this gig at the time, so here are a couple of links to my contemporary thoughts:

TLDR: as a gig experience, I probably enjoyed it even more than Birmingham the year before (although that was special in a different way!). Duran played some unexpected songs, and it was a really fun atmosphere, with Geth getting a lot of love from fellow gig-goers as it was his birthday, and lots of dancing in the crowd.

It’s fun to look back at the Future Past era gigs now that I’m used to the band’s Danse Macabre look!

They finished with ‘Rio’, which is fairly standard. Geth was dragging me to the exit during that one as the train back to Dublin city centre was due… and then the train driver waited for everyone anyway, for about an extra 20 minutes!

Setlist.fm has the deets here!

I didn’t have long to wait for another Duran gig, so expect another review soon…

Gig Review: Duran Duran at O2 Academy Birmingham, 14th September 2021

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It’s been two and a half years since I last did a gig review on here! I’m a bit out of the habit…

Like many other things in my life post-pandemic, going to gigs is not as frequent an occurrence as it used to be. I like my evenings at home on my sofa and it has to be something special for me to buy tickets these days. However, I have been to a few since the world started returning to normal (nine, by my calculations) and have one or two lined up for the future. It’s probably time I start catching up with some reviews again.

It was, of course, highly appropriate that my first post-pandemic gig back was my first time getting to see Duran Duran. They’ve been my favourite band for years now but for various reasons I just hadn’t had the chance to see them. When a couple of surprise dates were announced in September 2021, I grabbed the opportunity with both hands.

I reviewed this gig for both Daily Duranie and Cherry Lipstick at the time, so my much fresher thoughts are out there already and I won’t repeat those. Really it’s just nice to look back, in hindsight, at a really special experience – the suddenness of the announcement, heading down to Birmingham for the evening, the incredible atmosphere at the O2 Academy (a much smaller venue than the arenas Duran usually play) and the overwhelming feeling of experiencing something for which I’d waited a long time. Not to mention excitedly livetweeting the gig (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here) 😀

Duran Duran

Now, for the first time in nearly four years, I shall update my Band Aid baby bucket list:

Updated Band Aid baby bucket list progress: song artists 11/37 (29.7%); message artists 2/7 (28.6%); total artists 13/44 (29.5%).

Gig Review: LeBrock at the Head of Steam, 6th February 2020

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I find it a bit depressing that this last Saturday marked the one-year anniversary of the last time I went to a gig. I had so many booked for the rest of 2020, and now so many postponed ones booked for 2021… but as I’ve mentioned before, I expect it’ll be closer to 2022 before we can watch live music in a venue again.

As such, this very belated review marks the end of event reviewing on this blog for now. The next one – whenever it is – will be very special!

I’ve been really enjoying synthwave for a few years now, but this was only the second time I’d made it to a synthwave gig (the first being The Midnight a few months previously). Really hope we get a few more synthwave bands playing in Newcastle once the pandemic is over.

The support band were Tired of Fighting. Our friend George is in this band and is a huge synthwave fan, which is why they asked for the support slot as I understand it. Their sound isn’t very synthy but it was quite high-energy, creating a good atmosphere for what was to follow.

Tired of Fighting
Blurry photography as usual (there were a lot of dancing people in the way!) so I’ve had to cobble the band together in this image.

LeBrock, when they came on, kept up this energy throughout their set – which was surprisingly short, finishing quite some time before the venue closed, but featured all the songs they were best known for. I loved the set but I wish it had been longer – or that the venue had organised an extra band on the bill to fill the gap, as it sort of felt like the night had been cut short!

LeBrock
There was more energy onstage than it looks like in this image.

So with that early finish from LeBrock, that was the end of my pre-pandemic gig-attending. Not a bad way to end, but I’m really looking forward to the return of music events!

Blurry Gig Photo: Strictly Come Dancing: The Live Tour, 24th January 2017

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A new series today where I share some of my blurriest – and yet nicest in some ways – gig photos! Back in the old days when we could still go to gigs and shows, I would always take pictures as a memento, even at times when I wasn’t blogging. Gigs always feel like a one-off special moment that you can never have again, and so I always try to capture the magic. I’m not a great photographer and so am rarely successful, but my attempts usually end up fairly colourful.

Strictly: The Live Tour 2017

I don’t even remember who the couple in the photo were; I would have to check the programme. One of my main memories of the show is that the costumes appeared so much more sparkly in real life than they do on TV, but again this aspect doesn’t show up in any of my photos or videos – cameras don’t do sparkle.

A trip to a music concert next time. I miss gigs.