O2
david.cheal
It’s easy enough to diss Coldplay: they make music that’s hugely successful (boo!) and not terribly challenging; they’re middle class – a heinous crime in a form of entertainment that’s steeped in notions of “authenticity” (hence the enduring love affair between music critics and the oafish Oasis – hey, they take lots of drugs and they used to steal car radios!); and as people they just seem a bit nice, to the point of dullness. I’ve done the dissing thing myself often enough: there’s that way of saying “Coldplay” that sounds both slightly sneery and slightly shamefaced, in the same way that Read more ...
Russ Coffey
If anyone tells you that Deep Purple’s Concerto for Group and Orchestra (1969) wasn’t a masterpiece then they’re an idiot. In fact, it was, more or less, the only successful use of an orchestra with a rock band ever. Now, 40 years on, a pensionable Purple have hit the road again with a full symphony orchestra. But they’re not playing the Concerto. They’re playing their hits. Critically, they’re performing them without founding keyboardist, Jon Lord, and guitarist, Ritchie Blackmore. So, at 8.30pm when support band Cheap Trick had failed to ignite the room, even with a five-necked guitar, a 12 Read more ...
matilda.battersby
Can the Hanson brothers ever rid themselves of the shackles of “MMMBop” (the 1997 hit that brought them global renown)? More to the point, should they bother to try? These were the burning questions I armed myself with as I prepared to watch a band whose progress, it’s fair to say, I’ve hardly followed in the last 15 years since their falsetto singing and rambunctious head-banging brought the world such joy. So, having done some serious mugging up, and listened to their back catalogue, I was interested to see where fortune would have taken the clean-cut trio with the flowing blond hair.As Read more ...
bruce.dessau
Boy, do Arctic Monkeys move fast. There were 21 songs in their set at the O2 Arena last night and at one point they were racing through them at such a breathtaking lick I thought I would be on my way home within the hour. In the end their performance clocked in at around the length of a football match thanks to some pauses to swap guitars. Plus a break for Alex Turner to stand by the drums and ostentatiously comb his elaborate quiff. Some sections of the crowd might have questioned Turner’s surprising 2011 rug-rethink, but no one would dare question his ability to pen a brilliantly infectious Read more ...
david.cheal
It’s a long time since I laughed during a show as much as I did in this one. And not, I hasten to add, in a snarky, narky, sarky way, but simply because it was fun. In another illustration of just how deeply competitive the business of the arena pop show has become, Britney Spears’s Femme Fatale tour is a formidable song-and-dance spectacle, with a full complement of dancers and hydraulics and epic visuals, and one that also features some damn fine music. But what makes this one memorable is that it's sexy and silly in equal measure.First, I laughed at the sheer campness of the opening Read more ...
ash.smyth
In the 19 years of his million-selling gangsta-bragging pimp-shizzling hip-hop-rapping career, the man born Calvin Cordozar Broadus, Jr has gone to some lengths to inform us that his name is, in fact, Snoop Dogg. He has appeared as himself - or a transparent alter ego - in several films, "starred" in a raft of low-grade at-home-with-Snoop TV shows, referred to himself endlessly during interviews in the third person (and in his own weird third tense), and has about a thousand lyrics, songs and album titles with all or part of his moniker Read more ...
ash.smyth
Some bloke called Jack mailed to say that he did indeed have two tickets to Iron Maiden (baby), and for the Friday ‘n’all. So I called shotgun, threw on my cleanest “I ♥ Justin Bieber” T-shirt,* and pitched along to Docklands to hang out with the other teenage dirtbags – only to discover that they are, on average, actually about 40 years old. A lot of them in chinos.We were gathered there to witness Iron Maiden, seemingly at the top of their 36-year game, finish yet another epic tour, in London, in front of a Martian space-trailer set (yeah, who knew the boundary marker for manifest rock Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Last weekend ballerina Tamara Rojo performed to the largest live audience ever to watch the Royal Ballet, at London's O2 Arena. But what was it like facing 12,000 people, and trying with her partner, the Cuban star Carlos Acosta, to tell the intimate story of two young lovers in Kenneth MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet? She tells us it's a weirdly out-of-touch experience on that vast stage, almost like being in private. And thank goodness for the cameras. See theartsdesk review of the event.ISMENE BROWN: That photo (main image above) that shows you standing on stage looking out at the empty Read more ...
Ismene Brown
The Royal Ballet says it is inviting a new audience to experience the thrill of live ballet by taking Romeo and Juliet to the gigantic O2. Beware what you wish for. It’s the thrill of the live audience I’m starting with before I get onto the splendid show. Sweet packets rustled behind my ear, fish and chips were wolfed nearby, pizza shared, drinks slurped. People were still entering in droves 30 minutes after the start, obstructing the view of Juliet’s first scene. People were late back for Act II, triumphantly bringing the beers and crisps in, better late than never.Almost as bad as all of Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Jerry Seinfeld, acclaimed New York stand-up and star of the eponymous American sitcom co-created with Larry David, last performed in the UK 13 years ago. He’s currently doing a brief European tour and, while keen fans were quick to snap up tickets at the O2 in London, there were noticeably bare areas in the vast arena last night. Lots of British comics have managed to sell out the O2 (some repeatedly), but those unsold seats should come as no surprise; ticket prices started at £75 and went up to an astronomical £300, so the burning question must be - was he worth it?For presentation, a Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Explosions, 40ft flames, light shows and back projections. It may have been at the Dome but at times it felt more like being in a music video. A mini-film opened the concert. Rush circa 1973 were boys called Rash, and they’d play only when professor Alex Lifeson operated his music machine. The contraption also had a button marked “Time Machine”. When pressed this catapulted the band, on stage, back and forth through their 37-year career. Every time the trio played songs from a different era, screens announced the year. Hours later, when we shot forward to the song "2112", several thousand Read more ...
david.cheal
This was one of the funkiest shows I’ve seen for a long while; perhaps even since Prince’s peerlessly funky residence at the same venue in 2007 (though nowhere near as brilliant). There came a moment, on "Deeper Underground", when everything just clicked – the bassist and the drummer were locked in a deep groove, the guitarist was doing his precisely controlled chopping thing, the percussionist was rattling his timbales, the brass section popped and squirted, the backing singers shimmied, and singer Jay Kay himself did that weird dance, almost nerdy: glide-jerk, glide-jerk. Looking Read more ...