Killers, Elbow and Tears for Fears in Hyde Park

A great gig this, part of the BST summertime series in Hyde Park, and the first one to sell out. But also an endurance test for me. Having already been up late at my local comedy night in Southgate (which was a particularly good evening) and then come home for a last drink with my lodger before he moved out, and then getting up early to help him leave, I was already a bit sleep deprived. But then I had also bought priority tickets which allowed holders to enter an hour early to bag the best spot - a temptation that I could not resist. 

But of course to really get a good spot, you need to be in the queue early for the priority entrance itself. So I was there at 11;15 for gates open at 12, with first act not even on until 1:30. Security was airport style so we had to put everything in our pockets into a plastic bag. I had been wearing a jacket precisely so I didn't need to have a bag searched, so I had heaps to put in, including mobiles cameras etc. Belts were to be removed too, and needless to say the plastic bags they supplied were tiny. And having finally made it through and charging to the arena, clutching my bag full of bits and bobs to sort out later, they then want to repossess their plastic bags. Grr!

But that wasn't really what made it an endurance test. It was the heat. A very hot day indeed. But thankfully I got a spot on the barrier as it curved away from the stage to make a corridor between us plebs and the premium area to the right of the stage. And spent the first hour before anything happened just sat against the barrier reading, like most other early arrivals.

First act up in a long day were the Strypes a young Irish indie guitar band. Very passable performance, and ridiculously energetic one given the heat and the fact they were all wearing jackets, although at least the singer had the sense to dispense with his red-checked one to avoid heatstroke.

This guy was particularly energetic bouncing around like a puppy and twice as keen.

 Following them rattling through a 30 minute set were the Mystery Jets. Haven't seen this outfit for a few years, and while I can't say I am a fan, their songs were a step up in sophistication.

 Lead vocalist is Blaine Harrison above who is disabled - having been born with spina bifida.  bit of a setback for a frontman who you normally expect to be bouncing around stage where he is rooted to his keyboard. However he has a very fine voice. Not sure about the seventies porn star moustache he has gone for.

 Third act was a band I hadn't seen before - US out fit Cold War Kids. I would say not as sophisticated musically as Mystery Jets but with stronger songs. Lead singer Nathan Willett does move about a bit more than Blaine, but is trying to hide a beer gut. Bit chunky for a quite aggressive sounding indie band.

Then we got onto the Big Three who were what this bill was old on. (Well really it was a Big Four, but sadly they chose White Lies to headline a minor stage and I wasn't moving from this one having bagged my spot at the front!)

First up Tears for Fears. Now they were a big band in the Eighties, several big hits until the band, which is essentially just the two guys, Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith had an acrimonious falling in the Nineties. Now I don't know the current state of their relationship, but can only go by what one observed on stage. And in the whole of their set I don't think they as much as acknowledged the existence of each other. Don't think they eve looked at each other once. Luckily its a big stage. However, for all that they sounded tight, Roland did all he talking and they went down well with what was, although a mixed age audience, nevertheless one where 40 somethings were very well represented, if not the main demographic.

They finished on the iconic "Shout" and did all the rest including Mad World which had an outing as Christmas hit as cover version a few years back. But I couldn't help feeling that the stand out song was the cover version they did, of Radiohead's Creep. Popular band, but rather lightweight compared to Radiohead. although one might also say that compared to Radiohead, who isn't?

Curt Smith 

Roland Ozrabal (no he never traded on his good looks)

 There should be a rule, broken here by Roland, that you can't complain about how hot it is on stage if you are in your mid-fifties and wearing a jacket and leather trousers.

And so onto Elbow. I won't say too much about Elbow as I have seen them more than any band and there are several reviews of them on this blog. Suffice to say it was their usual warm performance, but a slightly truncated set as they weren't headlining. Nevertheless they unhurriedly went through a lot of their most well known songs, evenly scattered across their numerous albums, such as Magnificent, Grounds for Divorce, Birds, Lippy Kids and the inevitable One Day like This, which the audience wants to sing a long too forever, and which almost happens as Guy Garvey orchestrates the crowd.

Guy Garvey with his trademark arm action. somehow encouraging the audience at all times to join in

Mark Potter

Pete Turner

And so onto the headliners, the Killers. "It's been 4 years since we have been last in London"said Brandon Flowers" so we need to get reacquainted." We did. very satisfactorily.

Now a few introductory remarks about the Killers. Firstly, they are very much a band, not just one or two individuals and some session musicians. BUT on stage they are all about Brandon Flowers who is a textbook front man. Secondly, Brandon is defying the laws of physics. Although now 36 he seems younger every time I see him - appearance and the boundless energy on stage. Thirdly, they now have so many great songs behind them that they can play a set like this and the audience knows every song and almost every one has been a big hit.

Being Pride weekend and Brandon being gay, it seemed utterly fitting that Brandon would come on in a pink leather jacket to a massive burst of pink confetti. No quite into this - the performance positively exploded from the start.

This is a photo of the front of the crowd. Not the real crowd, but those who had paid for the premium area, giving them better bars and loos, at a large mark-up. My mate Mark was in this and he gave me a call, jokingly wanting a refund as I had a better position, at the real front, than he in this enclosure to the right, at right angles to the stage.

The pink confetti intro got a less monochrome repeat later..

Encore really finished with a bang with When we Were Young and Mr Brightside. Audience went out on an adrenaline high, a necessary drug for the long trudge through exits, the Park and overcrowded tube.

Canada road trip - arriving in Calgary

Well, from here on for several pages will appear my notes (and photos) from my trip to Canada and USA with my mate Thibault. Our third North American road trip together so obviously we seem to get on well. I remain especially flattered to be invited by Thibault not just because I am so much older than him, but also because he has to do all the driving. And he books all the transport and hotels. And researches restaurants.

And I, er, occasionally readjust the sat nav in the car if it slides out of position. And that is about it.

Despite my lack of participation, and our almost totally divergent tastes, interests and physical prowess, somehow we seem to get on. Much may hinge on my tolerance. Even our musical tastes are sufficiently unalike that listening to something in the car can be a trial of compromise. My (I have to say this) impeccable taste in indie rock impresses my young friend not one jot, so I get only limited use from my iPod player in the car, with Thibault taking refuge in the darker recesses of country music. Honestly. With compromise largely around 1970s dance music, which to me was at least a nostalgia fest.

But off we headed on our long journey - some 3000kms of driving all in all, starting in Calgary. Well that was where the driving started. By one of those quirks in international air travel, it was cheaper to fly past Calgary to Vancouver and then fly back to Calgary, only to then proceed to drive back to Vancouver, than to fly direct to Calgary.

Highlight of journey out, inevitably, was not being squeezed into ever more cramped seats, but the hour or so we had to kill in Vancouver before the transfer, which we spent in an airport bar. We got chatting to a woman who was trying to outdo us mere mortals by showing her intellectual prowess. Her description of travels in China and picking up the language were somewhat thwarted by my Mandarin speaking mate. Her attempt to impress by slipping mid conversation into French were adequately thwarted by the same source as Thibault could ask her, in his impeccable French, to stick to English as his friend wasn't fluent like him. And then, when we said we were lawyers she started on comparisons of English French and Latin for legal language. Now my turn to point out I had read Roman Law at Oxford and indeed some of Justinian in Latin. She quickly reversed out of that area as a topic for conversation.

Calgary airport has (for me) just one item of note - the baggage carousels. At Heathrow (and anywhere else I have been you just surround the carousels and stare vacantly at your fellow passengers on the other side waiting patiently for the luggage to start arriving. But no such possibility here as between the carousels they "sell" Canada, with little tableaux of, say Canadian wildlife.

For Thibault it just brought relief that he could get back on his smartphone. Youngsters.

But now came what was probably the low point in our Canada holiday. We were kidnapped by a hotel mini bus driver. Sort of.

There was supposed to be a complementary airport shuttle bus to our hotel. We could see where we were meant to stand, and evidently we had just missed a previous bus, but they ran every 30 minutes. So pretty much half an hour later a shuttle bus arrived emblazoned with Holiday Inn logos. So we asked the driver if this also served our hotel, he asked us to show the address which Thibault proceeded to show him and he told us to get in. So we did.

Now we were staying at an airport hotel, and these shuttle buses normally serve a number of hotels. But we soon realised he was going rather farther than anticipated. Indeed all the way to the Holiday Inn which was miles away. And only there. When we remonstrated that we had asked him if he went there he had told us to get in, he offered only to take us back to the airport to start the whole process again; not exactly what you want after more than 12 hours of flying.

We were pretty pissed off and tried to get a taxi from the front desk at the Holiday Inn to our actual hotel, only to be persuaded by reception there to get back on our bus, the staff having explained to the hapless driver where to take us on his way back to the airport. And before you think we were just stupid, there was another bloke on the bus who had done exactly what we had done, been told to get in and was also therefore stranded not at his hotel. So the three of us set out again in the hands of our kidnapper.

Our hotel came into sight and he asked if it was here and we confirmed to the driver that was indeed our hotel. At which point he asks the other bloke if that is his hotel, and he says it isn't and explains where his hotel is. And to our bemusement instead of dropping us off at our hotel, he takes this bloke to his hotel, and then expected us to go there too. We pointed out that we had already shown him our hotel by address, by sight and through the Holiday Inn staff's careful directions to him, but were now further away than when we had started.

Our man was clearly not the brightest, and Thibault was again keen we make a break for it and try and get a taxi from this hotel, but I persuaded him to have one more go at the bloke, and use our own sat nav to navigate him back. This itself was far from straightforward although in hindsight worth it for the comedy value. So the sat nav would in its mechanical voice say something like "In 300 metres turn right", Thibault would repeat "next right" and the driver would, despite hearing "right turn" twice,  ask quizzically "right?"

You would think this procedure should at least produce certainty that we would turn right with its triple verbal confirmation being a fail-safe. But no, because as the driver asks "right here?" he at the same time points left! Its very difficult to work out how to say "yes right" but also counteract the gesture of left, short of springing from the back seat screaming "right you idiot" and pointing which way right is in front of him. Indeed the temptation to just grab the steering wheel was hard to resist by this stage, not least as going from airport to airport hotel was now taking almost as long as flying from Vancouver to Calgary!

Anyway, we somehow made it to the hotel before Thibault blew a gasket. The Applause Hotel was actually pretty decent when we got there, and even with the lateness of the hour could offer us a passable burger before we turned in. Tomorrow would be a better day - an early start and straight off to Banff.