Muse rocked Wembley :D

Jun 17, 2007 21:39

Pictures and vids here.

Some of you will probably think this entry is completely over the top, you won't see what all the fuss is about. But I have a really big emotional connection with music. It's what I turn to when things go shit. It's what calms me down when I'm stressed. It's what gets me through the really tedious days. Particularly Muse. I got into them at a time when I really needed something, just anything, to show me that actually sometimes life can be unbelievably awesome.

Muse are on stage as I write this and I would love to be back there right now.

So about this time last year I found out that Muse would be touring the same Autumn, and I got a ticket. In November I saw them for the first time at Birmingham NEC and they blew me away completely. Then, a couple of weeks before Christmas, they announced that they'd be playing one of the first gigs at Wembley Stadium and I knew that I had to be there. So when the tickets went on pre-release for the mailing list, I was hitting the refresh button at 8:55 waiting for them to come on sale. I was successful. And the better part of 90000 tickets had sold out by lunchtime.

By last Friday it was time to grab Owen and head home. Caught the train from York to King's Cross at half six, and arrived slightly late due to the floods after playing many games of Worms on my laptop! We took a couple of tubes across London to Marylebone, and caught the train out to Haddenham, where Dad was waiting for us on the platform. We got home a bit after eleven and chatted for a while to the parents (my brother appears to have forgotten how to speak unless it's 100% necessary for him to do so), and went to bed (after giving Owen the grand tour. How weird is it that one of my uni friends has now been to my house?!).

Yesterday we got to Wembley, on a train packed with people wearing Muse t-shirts, at 1:45, an hour before the gates opened. We headed to our gate to queue, and saw Tom already at the front and wristbanded. We got in the queue literally as they ran out of wrist bands and I started to fear that we wouldn't make the golden circle.
The heavens opened. We stood in the rain for an hour and got unbelievably wet. Then the queue started to move. We were still at the front of the people without wristbands and I was prepared to grab Owen and Mum and surge to the turnstiles when it was our turn.
Oh yes, we got in the golden circle.

We headed out onto the pitch where Zane Lowe started to get things warmed up. It was our first look at the set too. In the middle of the pitch was a platform, with a path running all the way down to the stage. And christ was that some stage. Huge! There were two satellite dishes on stage, and two either side, complete with lasers. There was a video screen on either side, and then one across the whole back of the stage, which the wind could blow straight though (not that there was any). There were also massive great balloons up in the seating either side of the stage (where it wasn't being used). It continued to rain. Birds flocked around the top of the stadium.

The first support act were Rodrigo y Gabriela, a Mexican acoustic duo. They were actually really good, clearly very talented, and did some of their own stuff as well as some covers of pretty big songs like 'Stairway to Heaven'. After that Zane was back for a bit. Then we had Dirty Pretty Things, who were pretty dull if I'm honest. One of them was clearly pissed and proceeded to play an entire song with his top e string hanging off the head stock of his guitar. Luckily, the total lack of imagination of their songs (power chord after power chord after power chord) meant that it didn't matter at all. A while after them, we got the Streets, who came on to a mixture of cheers and boos. I appreciate Matt Bellamy's eccentricities, I especially appreciate what they bring to his astounding music, but really, inviting the Streets to support you at Wembley?!

So then the Streets went off and the sound check began. By then it had stopped raining, and tonnes of water was swept off the stage. It was like a swimming pool up there. Repeatedly the sound check seemed to be coming to an end, when everyone would disappear off stage and the crowd started chanting, but people kept coming back! One of the security guys came past waving a set list at us, and I managed to avoid seeing too much, in particular whether they'd be playing Citizen Erased! Finally, about 15 minutes late, the music stopped and we knew it was time.....

No one was quite sure where the band would arrive from, but the raised platform in the centre of the pitch had caught my attention the moment we stepped inside, particularly as it had a walkway up the stage. So it was no surprise when light, smoke and confetti erupted from it and three silhouettes came into view, shortly morphing into Chris, Dom (in hopelessly tight, lime green skinny jeans - the colour of his trousers had been the source of a heated debate between Owen and I and these two people we sort of befriended)), and Matt, all in red. To the sound of 'Montagues and Capulets' from Sergei Prokofiev's Romeo and Julliet ballet, they walked up the pitch and took their place on stage. And here is what they played.........

1. Knights of Cydonia - Last time I saw them they ended with this, but it was a heck of a way to start the show. It's just such a massive song. As ever it was accompanied during the 'No one's gonna take me alive' bit by the massive words on the screen.
2. Hysteria - one of my favourite songs, ever. No idea why, just love it. It worked so well after Knights. I just love that solo.
3. Supermassive Black Hole - I was so unsure of this song the first time I ever heard it, but it grew on me pretty quickly and it really is brilliant.
4. Map of the Problematique + Maggie's Farm riff - Another song I love! Shame the guitar it's played on is red and sparkly, but it went with what Matt was wearing!
5. City of Delusion - I hadn't seen this one before and I'd been hoping they would play it so it was really great that they did. They had a guy playing the trumpet which just topped the whole thing off.
6. Butterflies & Hurricanes - Another one of the big songs. You get the mad guitar solo, then into the piano. And that piano was amazing! Not only did it move forward for the songs it was used on, but the lid (it's basically an electric piano in grand form) was glass, and there were lights inside shining up onto it. An absolutely stunning instrument.
7. Citizen Erased - This is probably the Muse song I've most wanted to hear live so when I realised from the fiddly bits they always do at the start of songs (I can usually tell what they're about to play) what it was I went slightly nuts....It starts off so heavy with this huge, deep riff at the start (weirdly tuned 7 stringed guitar doncha know), then after the first chorus it goes into this fiddly bit I love (and have been trying to perfect for the last year) that sort of rings out across the stadium slightly eerily. Then it gets heavy again, and just as you think by five and a half minutes that the song can't get any bigger, it's turned on its head and you get the last minute and a half on piano. That's one of the things I love about Muse; so many of their songs lull you into a false sense of security but by the end they've grown into this huge thing you would never have seen coming.
8. Hoodoo - The same thing struck me this time as the last time I saw them do this song. It's basically Matt singing, and playing the piano with very little else going on, and it's the point at which you realise just how good a singer he is, just how incredibly talented he is. It's such an understated, haunting song, but in a way it completely steals the show because of it, because it's so special. I can't really explain what I mean.
9. Feeling Good - Another nice surprise. A massive cheer went up when Matt asked 'Are you feeling good?'
10. Piano interlude + Sunburn (piano) - Another I was really hoping they'd do. It's the first track from their first album, but it remains eternally fantastic. Very, very glad they played it.
11. Invincible - Probably my favourite song from Black Holes and Revelations. It's an incredibly moving song because of the sentiments within it. It's not completely clear what Matt wrote it about, but it's a song that you can give your own meaning to. Last time it nearly moved me to tears, and this time was no different. We had a brief joke at the start, where it sounds a little like whale song, that there would be another whale stuck in the Thames before long, summoned by Muse. A year on I'm still completely in love with the solo. It's like the guitar is speaking to you on some level above words.
12. Starlight - As ever, dedicated to the people at the very back. I think this was probably the point at which everyone on the pitch noticed all the twinkling lights in the crowd from phones and things. It was like the entire stadium was full of stars.
13. Man of Mystery - instrumental they've started doing recently....I hadn't heard it before but it started good.
14. Time Is Running Out - This is a song I'm not overly keen on ordinarily, but live it's something else. It's one of the best for getting the crowd going really well. I was so knackered by the end of it, but then it was time for....
15. New Born + Microphone Friend riff + Ashamed outro - This is another song like Citizen Erased, that changes quite dramatically. It starts off nice and quietly on piano and then bursts into this massive guitar riff with the crowd jumping up and down as one like everyone's completely possessed (which I think we were). The riffs at the end were ones they've been playing for years too, which was excellent.

And then they left the stage. Where we were, on the barrier at the right of the stage, someone caught sight of the guy who'd played trumpet, so he got a whole load of cheers from us! And then the chanting began until Muse burst back onto the stage, complete with a change of clothes for Matt! This was the point at which things got quite emotional for three songs.
Encore 1:
16. Soldier's Poem (guitar) - It's not the best song ever, provides this weird sort of interlude on Black Holes, but it comes across really well live, again because it's quite understated but the vocals are really strong.
17. Unintended - A total surprise, but one of the many things that made the evening so special. This is how love songs should be! Moshing turned into swaying arms and 90000 people singing along.
18. Blackout - Not one of my favourite songs, but on either side of the stage one of the massive balloons was set loose, and attached to each was an acrobat! It's really hard to explain how special this was, with two huge balloons drifting towards the middle of the pitch over everyone's heads, blue lights shining on them from the six massive satellites around the stage, with these two guys, perfectly in time with each other, performing to a background of Blackout. It had some serious wow factor.
19. Plug In Baby - Oh yes! That riff :D Oh the moshing....

It was quite funny, Muse went off stage again and the sane among us knew that there was no possible way it was over, but some of the people in seats started to leave....fools.

Encore 2
20. Micro Cuts - They actually played Microcuts! I love this song! I can play this song! At this point I knew that the night was perfect! It also saw the release of the usual giant Muse balloons full of confetti that made their way round the entire stadium, on and off stage, exploding every now and then and showering people in red paper stuff.
21. Riff + Stockholm Syndrome + riffs - I knew they would do Stockholm, there was no way they wouldn't. Another huge song with some seriously insane moshing going on!
22. Take a Bow - This is the song they started with last time, but like Knights (at the moment they start with one, end with the other) it works equally well at either end of the set. Again it has some really deep sentiments and is a really powerful song (and my Mum's favourite on BHAR). A brilliant way to end a brilliant night :D

They didn't play Bliss or Muscle Museum, but really, the set list was absolutely perfect. It wasn't a Black Holes and Revelations showcase, it was a total Muse showcase. It started and ended with some serious rock, but had its deep, sentimental moments too that perfectly set it off. I probably sound mad and like I'm gushing, but for those two hours when Muse were on stage that gig was all that existed. Nothing else in the world mattered except for being there, enjoying it, basking in the glory of being something so huge and so special. It was 90000 people united by these three guys and the music they make. That's not something you get every day.
I've totally failed to capture huge range of feelings I experienced because it's just too difficult to explain what it feels like to see a band live that you like as much as I like Muse.

Coming back to York today was such an anticlimax. We had to go back past Wembley Stadium on the way into London and I was so jealous of the people in their Muse t-shirts who got off there. They had no idea what they were about to experience! In the tube stations I was tormented by the many announcements about trains for the Muse gig! It was nice to go home for the weekend too, and hard to come back here knowing that all I face now is two weeks of revision and exams...fun.

But I shall not let that ruin what was a very good afternoon and evening, culminating in the best two hours since time began :D

memories, dom howard, chris wolstenholme, matt bellamy, happiness, muse, dreams, parents, guitar, gigs, music, wembley

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