Hello one and all of you wonderful people who take the time to read my blog and it amazes me the numbers are still growing of readers, you really must all be very bored 😁
So, here we are, another visit to Birmingham for yet another gig. So that's 2 Depeche Mode, 2 UK Foo Fighters and now add 1 Duran Duran. This is my 4th Duran concert and Sian's first so it will be a new experience of a different kind when Simon steps out on stage.
Firstly let me just say we always have the best times wherever we go and make the most of it (we must have a relaxing holiday at some point). We arrived on a Thursday and the concert was on a Friday and travelled back on the Sunday. Unfortunately it was the Kings coronation on the Saturday so we planned not to get involved, wait till it was all done and dusted then go out. This time around we stayed at Holiday Inn Birmingham city centre near our fav pub The Sly Old Fox.
We usually get an apartment but none were available near where we wanted to be due to the Birmingham Marathon on the Sunday, BLOODY JOGGERS!
We took a walk around as we normally do to see if anything new going on and there wasn't apart from Centenary Square where they were setting up for the coronation, good grief, why?
This little trip was more of a relaxation trip with a concert thrown in so we didn't really do allot apart from walk and drink with some food thrown in along the way. You've read about our trips to Birmingham many times so you know what we do and where we go.
Friday 5th, Duran Duran here we come.
We take a long way round walk to the Utilita arena to find a pub for a few beverages before we go to our seats and we find one aptly named The Prince of Wales. A nice little cosy traditional pub that was packed but we got a table for a couple rounds.
And now the time has come, it's time for the full Duran experience. We enter the arena without any queues and get our usual 2 pint plastic cup of lager to keep us going until a crap song comes on for us to get a refill.
Jake Shears the lead singer from Scissor Sisters was the support act and very good he was too but now it's main even time.
We had great seats, really good clear view and there was only 2 seats in our row, nice, a row just to ourselves. The picture doesn't do the distance from stage justice as it was a much better view than my camera is showing.
The lights dim and a computer game looking graphics come on the screens of a spaceship and inside that spaceship are Simon, John, Nick and Roger all as astronauts heading for earth as the tour is called "Future Past". They land on a street like one of the streets in Bladerunner and walk side by side down the street towards the stage until they disappear then you see the 4 guys appear on stage side by side. Now this may sound like a great illusion, it wasn't. Instead of when they disappeared off the screen and they then walked on from the back of the stage they walked up steps from the side of the stage and stood in the centre of the stage, entrance blown, could have been so much better.
Now for us the concert sounded amazing, the music was tight and Simon's vocals have not changed one pitch, i mean he sounds like the Simon of the 80's which not many do who have been around that long.
Our problem is with the atmosphere of their concerts. The atmosphere with most concerts starts on stage then becomes infectious through the crowd. Not with Duran. Duran Duran are the most dull boring band to watch ever, great songs, sound amazing, zero stage presence. Nick is stuck behind keyboards, that's fair enough, Roger is on drums, not much he can do there, John just stands still in front of a mic, boring and Simon is the worst front man of all time. When Simon moves its dad dancing but he never leaves centre stage, its like he's superglued there. The band create no atmosphere whatsoever by moving around the stage, running side to side and this is how bad Simon is at any interaction. In between songs the lights come up and he said looking at the crowd "You look like a big ice cream..........and it's making me HUNGRY!" Now is that shit or is that shit? I mean not even a "How you all doing? Are we having a great night or what?" Stage presence a big fat 0, Sound quality an amazing 10. Anyway, we still really enjoyed it as they played some blinding album tracks from the 80's and nearly all their hits, well worth the ticket price which was cheap compared to some of the concerts these days.
We don't like to have our phones out when we go to gigs but we took the odd snippet for the blog.
Firstly, here's Simon's "Ice Cream" link.......
And their biggest crowd pleaser....
And there you have it until the next time they tour as we'd definitely go again.
Time to head back to our Birmingham local Sly Old Fox to see out the night which we did in style as we were the last to leave and had to be told the pub was now shut at 1am, dirty stop outs.
SHOTS, SHOTS, SHOTS, SHOTS!
Feel like being pampered today morning after the concert so we ordered room service and breakfast in bed.
A nice fry up, toast, pastries and under the foil Bacon, pancakes and maple syrup, soooooo good!
The rest of the day was pretty lazy due to the coronation until the evening then back out to The Sly Old Fox.
Sunday was our day to go home, booooooooooo, luckily for us the marathon had finished by the time we were leaving and had no delays going back. Birmingham we love you.
We haven't really done to much since then but we did go to Marco Piere Whites in Cardiff for lunch.
Its was OK, what can you say about steak. Look, it wasn't cooked by Marco Piere White himself and even a pub grub cook should be able to cook a med-rare steak you don't have to be a trained chef to know how to cook that. Yes we enjoyed it but we just enjoyed the fact we were out enjoying each others company somewhere we hadn't been before the food was just a nice extra but we wouldn't rush to go back either, we've had just as good a steak in Zakynthos Town cooked by my friend Nikos for a third of the cost.
So just a short update today as how many times can we talk about Birmingham.
Well only 4 weeks until we fly in to Munich for 3 days then train from Munich to Paris for 4 days with a Depeche Mode concert thrown in for good measure and visit all of Freddie Mercury's fav places when he lived in Munich also be good to get back the the Great Canadian pub for some poutine.
And a quick welcome to the Foo Fighter family for Josh Freese who has joined them to stand in for the late great Taylor Hawkins. He's never going to be Taylor but what an amazing drummer and addition to the band, he will fit in just right and do a great job in honour of Taylor. We watched the live stream from Studio 606 where they introduced Josh as the new drummer and he was awesome.
Josh Freese playing at Taylors Tribute Concert.
So it's time to brush up on our German, until the next update........
Diene allen, liebe alle, friede alle, Kevlar raus!
