Subject :The Human League @ Astoria Sat 16th January 1999 Date : Mon, 05 Jul 1999 10:11:09 PDT well me and Andrew had been salivating over it for a week. We'd seen the posters at the King concert the week earlier and had talked and dreamt about it for the 7 days till now. The group were playing at the Astoria on a Saturday night. It is a major indie/metal venue every other day (Fear Factory, Helloween, Bruce Dickenson, Sebadoh, Front 242 and The King etc have played there recently) but on Saturday's it is G.A.Y. - a major gay nightclub who each night always have a special guest PA. In recent times they've had Boyzone, Sash, Sonia, Tamperer, Marc Almond and Gina G. This day I was tired as the past week I'd been trying to keep Anna-Maria busy and not too bored with her 10 day trip back to London. I finished work late at 8pm and got back home at 9pm. Tossed and turned over the decision to go even though Andrew offered to pay for me, at the end I relented and got a quick bite to eat and drink and we arrived in town at 10pm. On the tube there is a bunch of mid-thirties aged guys from New Zealand, I don't say anything but they look very familiar ? Were they some members of the Muttonbirds who have and are soon re-performing again ? One of them looked particularly familiar....someeone from a New Zealand from the 1980s, possibly punk, not a big band though...or maybe I'd seen him around Auckland. Anyway we barrelled up to the venue and it was closed, we went in though and the bouncer tersely says that is a gay club with Human League as a special guest for their clubs birthday. His terseness puts us off a bit...sniff sniff....we are sensitive souls you know.... We think harder about coming back later but we decide to stroll around town and play video games and drink. As we walk down Charing Cross Road we pass a gay bar called the KUBAR - it's funny as there are a few gay bars right around the corner from most possibly the highest pedestrian and tourist count in London. Sprawled on the pavement is a baldheaded guy who is not moving at all, I can't even seen his chest rise, he looks dead but no one looks concerned, especially the police. There isn't any blood and there isn't anyone else looking hurt or involved. It reminded me of the time our family played badminton and our colleague died and then when Sirius started sniffing his dead head the police officer kicked him away with his foot. These pigs are bastards ! :-) Incidentally, I've found that a lot of people except tourists think the police here are crap. I dunno why. Whenever I see the police rushing upon a scene normal everyday people scowl their faces. To waste some time we head into SEGAWORLD and play for the first time "House Of The Dead II" ! The machine is is great condition and the gunsights line up perfectly for me. In this game you are a private eye and the city has been taken over by zombies so you run around shooting them and saving people. Also play "Jurassic Park" which is another great shoot-em-up game. This is a game where you have to shoot at dinosaurs attacking you. The graphics are great and if you get a gun with a good kick on it it is a lot of fun. We walk around Chinatown and join a crowd of five watching across the road a big black bald guy punching another big black bald guy. The 'attacker' has the upperhand as he has already laid some punches into the other guy and the guy is stumbling around trying to keep his balance with rich red blood dripping from his mouth and chin. They are fighting near a plateglass window and hope the guy puts his head up against it so that the attacker will put his fist through it, but no such luck. The guy just stumbles around while someone tries to separate them. At one point out of the bar next door a group of girls and the dj with his recordbox on his shoulder walk out and the guy is punched into them. The girl screams and the dj pulls a face keeping a firm hold of his 12"ers. Funny how the sound of a fist pounding flesh is quite dull - but not as sickening as car bonnet yielding into a human body. (Or even worse a little doggies body). The time is about 11:30pm now. We head back to the Astoria and join the queue getting in, still a bit hurt about our treatment before (how could they tell we were hetero etc etc etc) We head out to the dancefloor and there are several hundred people already, an obvious smattering of gays as well as lesbians and straight. The music.... ...the music...is new/old dancey stuff... In fact it is very much like typical pub/club music.... BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT ... things take on a different in a gay nightclub. Whereas in a normal club/pub you would normally see men dance slowly or awkwardly, the men here go crazy and squeal with delight over Kylie and Rick Astley. In fact the biggest shout goes to STEPS and to Kylie's "Step Back In Time" (which is an awesome song and album actually ;-) Typical fodder like "YMCA" has 100s of people on the dancefloor, the tables, the stage (!) doing the actions....and somehow it all seems quite appropriate......for once......... A nice set of eighties synthpop encompasses Culture Club (Karma Chameleon), Kraftwerk (The Model), Yazoo (Don't Go)........ As we're jumping around I look over my shoulder and see an uncomfortable looking Jason Donovan with two female friends and a male friend. He's dressed in a red shirt and jacket. This is just prior to his appearance as Frank'n'Further in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. As the minutes tick away the dancefloor progressively gets more jammed. next to us a japanese couple comes on and starts dancing, both dressed in black. One of them looks like a japanese version of robert Plant with same facial features and hair, and the other is a bit tubby and looks just like my ex-workmate Vicki's boyfriend James - no offence intended. Eventually round 12:30 they clear the dancing people on the stage which takes a few minutes then they announce the band and with dry ice they come out. Both the girls are dressed in polar ice white fur jackets and dark glasses, and Phil comes out in a evening suit with the white shirt cut short to reveal his torso. The crowd goes mental and they launch into it. Naturally they are singing to a backing track. Tracklisting : Sound Of The Crowd - They start off with not one of my favourite songs but I think with it's chorus it's supposed to rouse people. Mirror Man - which is one of my favourite by cheesy feelgood songs with the girl's giving great background vocals on the chorus. Love Action - a classic but still sounding dated but great nonetheless to hear the original artists singing one of the songs of the generation. Human - ...and singing the worst song of the generation. Electric Dreams - great song and everyone else agreed wholeheartedly as the whole place went nuts and actually sung along as loud as we all could to this song with it's uplifting lyrics and sentiments ! Tell Me When - it was obvious that they would do this being their most successful song of late. I don't like it too much but it was nice to hear the Human League on the radio. Don't You Want Me - another classic song nuff said ! They had a break now to celebrate the clubs fifth anniversary with a presentation to the club owner whilst large confetti balloons fell upon us. encore : Fascination YAY ! During the concert the girls walk around on stage and pose while Phil moves about and along the front of the stage shaking hands and generally posing as well ! The concert finished would 1:10pm, we continued dancing till 1:30am or maybe 2am and went off to look for food. Burger King was on our mind, we had no money left, we had to scrape together some pennies for beers ! Andrew has hit ATM card but after tryig about 6 of them we realise something is up with the network as other people are looking disgruntled, at one ATM we see a white well-dressed gentleman get told by a well-dressed exotic black woman to withdraw out 400 pounds ;-))) Luckily we manage to find an ATM that is not affected by the outage and we get out 10 pounds with which is eat !! I would like to say something happened here but we ended up getting some food which we gobbled down and wearily took the long bus ride back home as usual packed with other nightowls ! This club definitely being one of my most favourite, mucho relaxed ! Subject : A grand day out 8th July 1999 Date : Thu, 08 Jul 1999 10:08:21 PDT HI All ! with my work I get Sunday and Wednesday's off ! I always want to just stay in and relax but I hate being cooped up and for those who know me well I always like to be on the go. So today I got up at 9am and did my duties around the hostel, summer of course has rolled around again and australasians are flooding London again. I decided to give the toilet a bit of a clean, the plumbing ain't too good and some girls here keep flushing bloody tampons down them, you can tell cos when the bowl overflows it's all red. In today's case it had overflooded and someone has actually done number 2s, so when we drained the bowl there was a bit of stuff smeared up near the top of the bowl, yechy ! Luckily I am upstairs now and as there are less people it's kept in much better condition ! Today I had in mind to do some music shopping, ain't done it in about 3 weeks, I'd sold a bit of stuff via ebay an online auction house some weeks ago but even though I sent in some money to top up my account with them I am still in the red so I'm really anxious about it as I do have a lot of stock here still to sell. I had to return a library book (Bill Bryon - Neither Here Nor There) and also wanted to possibly get to a sale. I got a call from Nina and we planned to meet in Leicester Square at 3:30pm. I never made it to Harrods first day of sales, last year Cher opened it, this year it was Sophia Loren and there were lots of good bargains to be had, I may go there this Sunday though it is also the Bangladesh New year festival of some sort so I want to go to that. I checked out a second hand store and at the end of the day I spent 15 pounds on 15 cds !! I finally caught up with Nina at 4:15pm - we'd got a bit lost ;-) Too late and too expensive to go to the movies round the west end, we checked out the halfprice ticket booth, this is a store in Leicester Square and they sell for halfprice unsold tickets for shows. I don't know why all the other ripoff fullprice places get patronised so much ! We definitely want to see West Side Story before it finishes but I had a hankering to see Mr and Mrs Charlton Heston in "Love Letters". It is a two hour play where both people sit on a desk and read out letters that trace the relationship of Melissa and Andy, starting at primary school through to the end. The point being that it is letter writing that keeps their friendship together but also keeps them apart romantically. No one else is too keen to see it but I greatly admire Charlton Heston so I'd like to see him in real life !! Unfortunately the booth only has halfprice best seat tickets so down from 36 UKP to 18 UKP ! Still too much, we were hoping for halfprice 10 UKP tickets ! Decide to save money so Nina and I check out some stores, there is a gay outdoor festival happening so she picks up a ticket for that despite the rude man at the gay shop we went into. We want to go as Marc Almond is the headliner, Jimmy Sommerville was the one last year. But I may be working on that day. And with his forthcoming concert next Friday I may be all Marc'ed out ! For dinner I grabbed some Wendys, hadn't had it for about a year, tastes just like back home ! yum yum ! Unfortunately my stomach gets upset easily so I was feeling a bit bloated after it. Sometimes I think Nina and I are one and the same, to further this hypothesis is the evidence that she does not have a watch, so we must rely on the kindness of others. We decide to go home and see if there are cheaper standby tickets available ! As we walk down Haymarket road we decide to walk by Phantom Of The Opera and just like Tuesday I find 10 pounds on the ground ! joy ! Nina looks at me and says it is fate and I have to go see "Love Letters" now ! Everyone is dressed immaculately outside the venue, I am wearing khaki shorts and tshirt, I dig into my bag and get out my all purpose purple shirt for such occasions. I bowl up to the box office and ask for the cheapest tickets available, he says 10 so I say go for it, he says there are some smpty seats on the first level and points vaguely to the side of the seating plan. Nina has to head off to her grans so I give her a hug and head inside feeling quite elated but tired as well ! I head on up to the royal circle and look around for my chair on the sides, eventually I find it and I am right in the middle of the front row ! Possibly the best seat ! Anyway I'll save you the boring bits about the 'play' it was just worth it to see them in real life. The play lingers a bit on the middle and doesn't have quite the sufficient amount of closure I prefer in relationship based plays. On stage he looks like the chisel-jawed legend that he is, when he got up to leave though I noted that he had a slight hunch now, or perhaps because he was bending down to escort his wife. It went for 2 hours with a break in the middle and held my attention ok. I picked up a program and his autobiography and got it signed, as we went into his room it was all very exciting. We didn't have much time to chat so I shook his and gibbered something about how it was a pleasure and then I left. The girl in front was estatic at meeting her hero ! me....I quickly bolted for home, man what a day...... http://darrylfong.webjump.com/idesk/darryl.html Subject : The Phantom Menace and Marc Almond Concert 16th July 1999 Date : Fri, 30 Jul 1999 08:59:03 PDT On Wednesday it was my day off ! I was supposed to catch up with Nina but caught up in a game of multiplayer UNREAL so missed her call whilst I was running round shooting baddies in a maze. Got my UK tax rebate back as I'd only been working 4 months in the last tax year so I have 592 UKP to save up here for expenses and debts etc !-) Checking the daily muck er...tabloid I see tonight is the royal premiere of The Phantom Menace so being the star spotter that I am I decide to head down to Leicester Square, home of all the major cinemas. I want to catch The Matrix (at long last) at 4:40pm so I take a leisurely relaxed trip down to the cinema to find it was actually at 2pm and then next at 8pm ! Walk a few seconds and I can see the barriers being put up for Star Wars, walk a little further and I can see about 600 people waiting outside already, lotsof camera, film crews, darth Maul facemasks, light sabres, lotsof dressed up fans hamming it up for the media ! Sheeshkebab ! I had planned to meet with Emma at 7pm but I grab a phone and tell her to meet me in town asap. I grab a "spicey meatball" subway sandwich (my first in about a year) and a drink to hold me in stead for the hours of standing we would be doing. Coming down the restaurant stairs Emma is looking in as we'd planned to meet at Tottenham Court Station next door.... Head back to Leicester Square and the crowd has ballooned to a couple of thousand, the movie is supposed to start 7-8pm. We manage to get up close to the entrance though not that good a spot..... At 6:30pm the stars start arriving. Funnily enough I find it hard to recognise some of the stars, luckily next to us is a beatnik who seems to know every celebrity under the sun as well as being quite tall so he could tell us who was coming. The first people up the red carpet were very tall guy with a lot of brown hair and a dwarf : Peter Mayhew and Kenny Baker. Chewbacca and R2D2. They hang around and the place is lit with camera flashes and the meet the fans near the main entrance. My memory gets all a bit hazy now but after a drought of 10-15 minutes all the Uk stars and celebs turn up. Queen guitarist Brian May and family, Brian Blessed who has a part in the movie, various UK celebs that you may not have heard of including Ronan Keating from Boyzone, some news readers, Julie Swahala, Anthony Daniels (C3PO)... Some stars walked but those that came in limos you could tell were big, one major star who walked the stretch was Samuel L Jackson so I got a photo of him as he passed in front of me. Those that we caught a glimpse of were Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, George Lucas, Jake Lloyd, Ahmed Best (voice of Jar Jar Binks)....... Anyway it was pretty well worth it to be part of such an occasion and the reported 6000 people agree with me...... heh heh heh spot the fanboy.... On Friday it was a night I was looking forward to, Marc Almond's concert at the Royal Festival Hall on the Southbank. It was a bit of an anxiety rush as I left work late and left myself to get to The South Bank from Wembley with only 45 minutes to spare ! As would be expected I missed the trains I normally use to cut down on time and with a showtime of 7:30pm I got out at embankment station at 7:15pm and ran across the bridge over the Thames passing other concert attendees dressed in obvious black. I rush in and head for the toilet straight away, everyone is still milling around so that reassures me, I catch Nina so we head on up and grab our seats, we are about 50 metres from the stage, the venue is different in that even though we are far from the stage the balcony on begins about 10 metres behind us so I don't have a sense of shadow over me which I find quite disconcerting. The venue is very seventies design with multiple balconies alining the walls, the leg room is very very small, to get to my seat I need to walk over a old french woman. We're far but the view is still good from here. A little after time Marc and his band comes out to tumultuous applause, all his major major fans are here for possibly his only concert in London in such a large venue. Here is the setlist and my comments, as with his other concerts he sings some songs all the time with extras thrown inbetween : Night And Dark Open All Night The 2 songs are from the new album and Marc is dressed in black as usual, Open All Night is an upbeat track but Marc looked a bit stilted and not quite warmed up yet as his movements were wooden. Untitled There Is A Bed I've Never Seen Your Face At this point the inbetween banter is very good and he chastises latecomers -- this is a bit of a problem as the english culture loves to drink and there is constant movement throughout the whole of the show as people answer their calls of nature and to get more alcohol. This is fustrating to say the least, but I'll spare you the bad language that Nina used.....;-) Sleepwalker Blackheart Catch A Falling Star Follow Me You - poem For this he removed his microphone and walked amongst the first block so ended up walking slightly in front of us, reciting a poem about a prostitute who falls in love with a client, after this intimate display he was given a standing ovation. Stories Of Johnny Tenderness Is A Weakness As with every other concert he has a planned adlid and false starts for this song which is getting a bit tiring now but the crowd loves it. A Taste Of Champagne Childstar yay ! great song which I hadn't seen before. When Bad People Kiss On The Prowl A Lover Spurned Around here he announces he'll do some better known songs for those "managers and their secretaries who've decided to turn up for the concert because that singer's name sounds familiar...." The Days Of Pearly Spencer Something's Gotten Hold Of My Heart I was wishing he would sing this song, unfortunately the high notes he sings aren't here as he tried to engage us all in a singalong. My Love He got a girl's handbag from the audience and danced around it to put him into a disco mood, everyone was hoping he was going to sing "Tainted Love" now...... [for those not in the know, 'handbag music', 'handbag house' etc is a term describing cheesy and easily accessible dance music that everyone likes, including girls who will then hit the dancefloor and put all their handbags in the middle and dancearound it] Black Kiss Saint Judy Tragedy This has turned into one of my favourite songs ! nice and uplifting etc etc ! At the end he walked off and everyone stood and clapped except me. Nina being upstanding can see some people head to the front of the stage so we leave our stuff behind and run down the stairs, so close that Nina is right up front in the centre and can touch his boot if he didn't stop moving around ! I was behind her and got great snaps of Marc up close, to the side of us is a guy with typical black makeup, looking backup everyone looks like ordinary people, a mild smattering of asians and oldies. Encore: Le Diable (ca va) Jacky Seedy Films Say Hello Wave Goodbye Basically the same encores he did for the final concert in 1998 at the Almeida (in which Cate Blanchett is still treading the boards in the show called Plenty). For the final song everyone joined in and sung, a big white thuggish guy next to me looked like a bigger beefier version of John Malkovich with a definite furrowed brow was singing along heartily as well. Marc came off the stage and walked through us and through a few rows before returning safely back to the stage where he belongs. And that was that, the other shows were in smaller venues where it was more intimate and more theatrical but Marc did his best. Afterwards Nina and I hung around getting some photos, I missed getting the setlist and someone grabbed the feather boa on stage much to Nina's chagrin. When we returned to our seats my shabby supermarket plastic bag was still there but Nina's bag was gone !!!!! cue a few seconds high anxiety, but as it happened a fellow was worried someone may take it so he handed it into the steward. He came up and told us so later on so we gave him generous thank yous and talked about the concert. You can always trust a Marc Almond fan.