Muse and Top Gear

Two weekends ago we were very busy. We saw Muse at O2 Arena on the Friday and Saturday morning went to Birmingham to see Top Gear Show!


We got the VIP parking arranged again for Muse, so other than the horrible 2 hour journey it wasn't too stressful. We got there with sufficient time to queue in the slowest queue ever for merchandise. People in front of us were actually trying on T shirts for size!

We had seats on the front wheelchair platform and the boys were fairly nearby in the seats behind us. The stage layout was unusual as they had decided to have seating behind the stage at the middle tier. I guess it allowed a couple of hundred extra tickets to be sold but it meant that they built a walkway around the back of the stage and built the sides up high. It meant that the back of the stage was obscured and although I could see the band most of the time, having a huge section of stage side wall my field of vision was quite distracting.

Muse opened the show with a couple of tracks from the new album, off which they played almost every track during the gig. With an increasing back catalogue to choose from, they still managed to include many old crowd pleasers including Jake's favourite, Plug in Baby. Matt Bellamy gave Jake a new challenge by playing the main riff while spinning around with the guitar above his head. I can imagine the carnage in Jake's bedroom!

They played faultlessly as usual with the singer hitting even the most ridiculously high falsetto note. However there is a small part of me that wonders if the 3 of them and the session keyboard player stopped playing, how much sequencers were being used. I think sometimes I would rather hear a less album perfect reproduction in favour of a rawer live sound. Great gig though.
 






On Saturday we headed to Birmingham for the Top Gear show. I took the boys a couple of years ago when they did both a London and Birmingham show but for whatever reason it's only Birmingham now. But Luke is such a massive Top Gear fan, we decided to go and commandeered my sister's husband David to help with the driving. Our show was at 3-45, so we planned to arrive at 2 to look around the exhibition although by the time actually got in we only had 45 minutes. It turned out to be sufficient as it was much smaller than the Earls Court one. The boys were very happy to see a Bugatti Veyron for the first time.



Our experience of the show's organization hadn't been great so far having been directed to the wrong gate to get dropped off then David had to drive somewhere else to get a ticket for disabled parking.

Next we were ushered with everybody else to the arena entrance only to discover 15 minutes later they had sent us the wrong way and now we had to battle back through the thousands of people behind us to get to the correct entrance! Then we discovered that the boys' seats were on the other side of the arena and not directly behind us as promised when booking. Fortunately David was sitting with them but we wanted to watch it together. So thoroughly unimpressed with the NEC.

But the show made up for it. The first hour had Tiff Needel and Vicky Butler Henderson presenting various races around the indoor circuit which were impressive. During the break we managed to get the boys and David on the wheelchair platform for the rest of the show. The Top Gear gang did a one and a half hour show which comprised of various displays interspersed with the usual top gear cocking around including a hilarious motorbike sidecar football match. The boys loved it and despite the hassles it was well worth going.