Take That, British Summer Time, Hyde Park, London. Sat 9th July 2016.

This was a slick show, so tightly choreographed that it left little room for spontaneity. The three boys know how to put on a spectacle better than Specsavers. With a team of dancers in various costumes throughout the show, and guests Lulu and DJs Sigma, they wowed the crowd for nearly two hours. They won me over despite it being Take That.

Despite the expense, the VIP Diamond tix were well worth it, getting to listen to the majority of the support acts while sitting in the VIP Garden, with proper toilets and lots of bars and food kiosks. Our special section in front of the stage was brilliant with only a few drunks occasionally spoiling things.The 65,000 strong audience on the other side of the stage walkway reminded me of the Walking Dead (singing dead?) stretching back as far as the eye could see. They must have been well jealous.

The main support was Olly Murs. He gave a great 45mins too, running through his hits, duetting with Ella Eyre who had been on earlier, and covering a medley of dance classics, ending with Uptown Funk. A great warm-up for the main event.

Setlist
Nessun Dorma (Giacomo Puccini song) tape intro
Shine
Greatest Day
Get Ready for It
Hold Up a Light
Patience
Pray
The Garden
Up All Night
Said It All
Everything Changes (first performance since 2011)
It Only Takes a Minute (first performance since 2011) / Could It Be Magic
A Million Love Songs
Back for Good
Relight My Fire (Dan Hartman cover) (with Lulu)
Cry (Sigma cover) (with Sigma)
The Flood
These Days
Rule the World
Never Forget

Vintage Trouble, The Old Fruitmarket, Glasgow. Sat 25th June 2016

'Leave your troubles at the door, we're having a dance party tonight in Glasgow.'

But first...

The support act tonight were Slydigs, a band from Warrington who plug away with a sub-Oasis manc-rock. I had trouble understanding the bescarfed, vest wearing bassist when he occasionally made a comment on the mic but musically they did a fine job warming up the crowd of Troublemakers, most of whom were 40+. Just before the main act took to the stage, you began to notice the influx of sneaky teenagers, with their youthful energy, squeezing through the lard.

The audience anticipation was tangible and Vintage Trouble didn't disappoint. They have always been a great live band but tonight it struck me how tight they have become, visibly enjoying the performance, confident in their talent, yet humble that we decided to spend our time with them. Each of the waist-coated marvels was superb, packing more into 90 mins that a lot of bands ever give. The keyword was energy.

The audience sing-a-longs were loud, proud and word perfect showing how devoted a following they've picked up. Tye Taylor, the lead singer, loves to get among the audience and he was everywhere tonight: main stage, floor, tech board, side balcony, rear balcony and on top of the audience. He's like a dance preacher, with 'hands in the air' shouts and demands to dance, clap and sing that get all ages responding, showing his own moves like a dance-dynamo. The only time the audience energy sagged was when they played an unfamiliar new number that had a different groove. By the end of the show, my palms were so sore from clapping I had to fake clap.

I believe, now that the world has lost some of its musical greats, Vintage Trouble deserve to claim one of those fallen crowns. If you get the chance, go and see them. You won't be disappointed.

Setlist
Run Like the River
Nobody Told Me
Strike Your Light
Another Man's Words
Roller Coaster
Turn the Sky to Blue
Highland Dance Party!
Trouble Makers Medley: You Better Believe It (With elements of Total Strangers) / Soul Serenity / Angel City, California / Jezzebella / Gracefully / Total Strangers
Doin' What You Were Doin'
Blues Hand Me Down
Pelvis Pusher

Encore:

Nancy Lee

Sarah Pascoe, 'Animal', The Stand, Glasgow. Mon 20th June 2016

Sara Pascoe was superb tonight at The Stand, Glasgow, performing her 'Animal' tour. An hour and a half of solid comedy material, interweaving stories, funny thoughts, callbacks and bizarre ideas, like, she's decided she could be the Prime Minister but a pacifist one, who sells Trident on eBay and uses the cash to fund the NHS and pay nurses serious wages, like Sultan of Brunei money. But she'll only be the Prime Minister of those who want her cos she'll let the ones who don't want her to leave. (I do not do her material justice).

She talks almost non-stop and there are so many little funny gems along the way that you are enthralled by her. She describes wanting to be more confident, even adopting a baseball cap before the interval so 'Confident Sara' can plug her book, 'available for sale in the corridor', but I can see she has grown so much since her first tour.

She can be both erudite and silly in the same sentence. She's not afraid to explain a concept laughter-free knowing there's a punchline, a callback and a point to follow. Her material may be feminist friendly but she still appeals to both genders, with a routine on a local Sex Dungeon, her poor ability at giving handjobs and empathetic porn pop-ups and banners to teach men about the truth of relationships.

(I just mistyped relationshops* - what a brilliant concept - a shop where you can buy advice on being a better partner. But I digress.)

I could see the material she's written for this tour translating beautifully into a BBC2 sitcom, to rival Miranda, but with less pratfalls and more promoting the joy of female pubic hair.

Intelligent, whimsical, coy and magnificent: Sara is her own beast and well worth catching.

Eddie Izzard, Force Majeure (In English), The Stand, Glasgow. Sun 19th June 2016

Tonight's summary: human sacrifice, dogs, Caesar salad, a chicken, giraffes, lions & tigers, moles, horses and someone called Steve. Yes, I was at the Eddie Izzard 9pm gig tonight at The Stand. (performance in English, mostly, with occasional clucks). Fun stuff but I was too feart to take a piccy.

All proceeds from the gigs are being donated to the charities that Jo Cox supported.

Coldplay, 'A Head Full of Dreams' Tour, Hampden Park, Glasgow. Tues 7th June 2016

Despite the Yellow weather warning from the met office, the rain stayed away above Hampden. Even if it had, I don’t think it would have dampened the mood because the Coldplay audience were having an Amazing Day (if it had been at Parkhead, I could have used the ‘Para-Para-Paradise’ line).

As you entered the stadium, each person was handed a wristband (or Xyloband). Instructions on how to activate it and wear them appeared on the big screen prior to the show. The lighting effect of tens of thousands of these across the whole stadium was amazing, like rainbow fireflies dancing above the audience. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

We had seats in the West Stand, with a stretch of tarmac and the First Aid tent between us and the packed standing area. It felt like we were sitting in an overflow car park, the distance it left us from the stage and its long extension through the middle of the audience. The squinty First Aid sign also frustrated me, but not so much that I could be bothered faking an illness in order to get through the barrier to the Standing area to straighten it.

We missed the first support act but caught the second. Lianne La Havas offered some strong vocals and a guitar groove that was infectious, even if few of the audience agreed when she asked them to sing ‘Turn up your love’. The camera pan on the big screen displayed a sea of staring, closed-mouthed fans. Nevertheless a fine support act.

Coldplay came on at 8.45pm and played through to 10.50pm. There were fireworks, explosions of floating colour, giant balloons, lasers and even shooting flames, most of which lost their impact until the sun set. This didn’t matter though because deep down Coldplay is about four blokes playing great stadium pop-rock. Chris Martin is a charismatic frontman and musician and the band is solid.

A lot of people mock Coldplay, a fact which Chris Martin acknowledges, but I think those people just don’t get it. Coldplay capture and share joy in performance. Chris Martin is a man-child who never had his dreams crushed by life. He loves what he does and it shows: with talent, with humour and with uninhibited dance moves, like you might have done as a kid and not cared. It’s all about being happy and having fun. What's not to love?

They played from three different locations within the stadium: main stage, end of walkway stage and in the Stand opposite the stage, none of which were any closer to us, a fact for which Chris apologised. Nice guy.

As always, a few fans caught my attention. The tall Chris Martin clone, with the University of Glasgow lanyard and cycle helmet, who sat in front of me was an annoyance, because, when he was sitting, he used the back of his seat as an elbow rest and kept hitting my knee, and when he stood up he blocked my view.

The dancers on the tarmac were heart-warming. Two, in particular, stood out: the one I imagined to be Susan Boyle’s blond sister, in a black top and leggings, who performed her own form of expressionistic dance during the entire concert, adding a purple balloon prop later on. She was brilliant, even shimmying all the way up to the fencing at the First Aid tent for a quick vape; and the bare-backed squaw in the yellow dress and gold sandals, wearing sunglasses and a hairband, who performed a ‘keep the rain away’ dance with her lanky male partner for the entire show provided lots of vigour. Not a dance inhibition between them. (videos to follow)

Overall, it was a great concert experience, despite the view.

Setlist
A-Stage:
O Mio Babino Caro (Maria Callas song) tape
A Head Full of Dreams (extended intro with Charlie Chaplin speech)
Yellow
Every Teardrop Is a Waterfall
The Scientist
Birds (with "Oceans" excerpt in intro)
Paradise (with Tiësto remix outro)

B-stage:
Magic
Ink
Everglow (Single Version)

A-stage:
Clocks
Midnight (Partial)
Charlie Brown
Hymn for the Weekend
Fix You (with "Midnight" excerpt in intro)
"Heroes" (David Bowie cover)
Viva la Vida
Adventure of a Lifetime

C-stage:
Kaleidoscope (extended)
In My Place (acoustic)
The Hardest Part (audience request song; acoustic)
See You Soon (with a snippet of "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)" by The Proclaimers)

A-stage:
Amazing Day (extended intro)
A Sky Full of Stars
Up&Up
End Credits (concert credits on screen)

MUSE, Drones tour, SSE Hydro, Glasgow, Sun 17th April 2016

I was really looking forward to this gig. 'Drones' was my favourite album of last year and, although our seats were in the upper section, MUSE had promised a spectacle.

The first disappointment came on arrival when everyone was being funneled into huge lines through the south entrance. At this point, the doors had been open for forty minutes so I wasn't expecting such a long queue. It took fifteen minutes to get through in a bitingly cold wind as security searched (almost) everyone for booze or weapons. Our queue didn't have a female security person so the women didn't get a frisk. The man who searched me was in a right mood, pausing his search to repeat, 'I said are you carrying any beer, bottles or cans?' when I failed to respond to his initial mumble. If you expect an answer, don't address my chest, talk to the ears. Welcome to the Hydro.

The second disappointment was realising we couldn't see the round screen above the stage from our seats because the sound and lighting rigs obscured our view. This was a small irritation but enough to trigger my negative mood.

The support act were not the ones listed on the Ticketmaster email. Instead, we got Phantogram, an American electro-rock band with a female lead singer. They never managed to own the large circular stage. Being unfamiliar with their work, their songs never engaged me and I was glad when they stopped.

MUSE have a powerful sound. It's a shame they didn't get the acoustics right last night, with a lot of sibilance on Matt Bellamy's vocals. I didn't think he was on top form, his guitar work occasionally sloppy, his vocals missing the big notes consistently. Matt also failed to personalise the show for the Glasgow fans, bar three obligatory mentions of Glasgow and two of 'Scotland'. No chat, little crowd work; it was the same show that everyone else gets. He didn't even introduce his bandmates.

I did think the staging was imaginative, with its turntable centre and raised wings; the lighting was amazing and the floating spheres added another dimension. The screens that descended occasionally worked well sometimes, such as when displaying the hands pulling the puppet strings, but were weaker when projecting live images of the band. Maybe it was the angle we were looking at them, though.

The crowd on floor level looked like they were really enjoying themselves, bouncing and rippling, with an occasion mini mosh pit erupting during the faster numbers. Upstairs we wobbled our legs, nodded our heads and were told to sit down if we deigned to stand. Probably for our own good given how drunk some were. The chatting behind me really irritated me during the quieter numbers but that was perhaps due to a lack of engagement with the band. It didn't stop me imagining turning around and lifting the squawking woman bodily from her seat and propelling her over the balcony to the floor below. Give her something to really talk about. A couple of rows in front of me the tall lads, in their late twenties/ early thirties, with formerly athletic frames built in the gym and lost in the pub, regularly popped off for another quartet of pints, forcing everyone else in the row to stand up to let them out. I understand why they don't but it would be great if the venue would shut the bars during the performance to avoid this disturbance. I was amused by their air hugging at the end, necks too tired to support their lolling heads.

If I went to see MUSE again, I would only want to do so if I was standing. I'm left with a feeling of 'seen that, done that, box ticked, move on' which I'm sure is not the impression MUSE want to give their fans.

Setlist
Drones (Intro tape) 
Psycho
Reapers
Map of the Problematique
('Who Knows Who' riff + Rage Against The Machine's 'Maggie's Farm' riff outro) 
Dead Inside
Bliss (Extended outro)
The 2nd Law: Isolated System (Shortened)
The Handler
Supermassive Black Hole (The Jimi Hendrix Experience's 'Voodoo Child' intro)
Prelude
Starlight
Citizen Erased
Munich Jam
Madness
[JFK]
Stockholm Syndrome (Rage Against The Machine's 'Township Rebellion' riff + 'Execution Commentary' riff outro)'
Time Is Running Out
Uprising (Extended outro)
The Globalist
Drones (Reprise)

Encore:
Take a Bow
Mercy
Knights of Cydonia (Ennio Morricone's 'Man With a Harmonica' intro)

Mark Thomas. ‘TRESPASS’, The Tron Theatre, Wed 13th April 2016

Mark Thomas is a political comedian, an activist, a trouble maker and, most of all, very funny. With an impish demeanour, he can be playful, indignant, raging and serious all in one sentence. Throwaway lines explode like comedic hand grenades. He prowls and parades across the stage, owning the space (an apt metaphor), commanding and demanding our attention for the words he speaks are a gospel of truth designed to open our eyes to the injustices around us (with wank gags: he assures us the political stuff is coming later).

In the first half, the fifty-three-year-old performs as his own support, describing what he was up to last year with his 100 acts of minor dissent. The audience supply him with four random numbers between 1 and 100 and he describes those particular acts from his book of the same name. They encompass things like having three female friends racing a pink remote control car on the pavement outside the Saudi embassy to rearranging the letters on the overhead banner promoting the films playing at the Curzon Cinema to highlight their policy of using zero hour contracts and paying less that the living wage. It was in this half that he notices an audience member lit up by his mobile phone. He then pauses the show to lecture the person about how, having paid for his ticket, he may feel entitled to use his phone but in reality, he was not only putting him off as the performer but he was also being rude to everyone around him who had also paid for their tickets. Such an act of selfishness could only be regarded as that of a Tory, he commented. This serious aside kept the mobiles away for the rest of the performance, a novelty.

In the second half, he starts the show proper. ‘Trespass’ is a show highlighting how our civil freedoms are being eroded by privatisation to such an extent that the very land beneath our feet is being sold off. A public footpath between the Thames and a high rise complex (30% occupied but 100% sold, at a cost from £2.5 million an apartment) has signs erected by the residents saying ‘No Loitering’. Mark takes umbrage with this curtailment of his right to loiter on public land and arranges a tea party with cake to encourage passers-by to stop. Then it escalates to a full-blown fete the following week when the residents complain.

He runs a 5K along the two public edges of the 15 metre triangle outside the RBS London head office to highlight that this former public pavement is now owned by RBS. He then attempts to get the walk recognised as a heritage trail. Just two examples among many that inform the show so I'm not spoiling too much.

The joy in his work is the way he uses absurdity to shed a light on injustice, which in itself can be equally absurd, e.g. Salford Council wished to introduce a swearing ban so he asked them to indicate which from a list of 240 words could he use during his show at the Arts Centre, not wishing to break the law. They replied he could use any of them because his show was art and they did not wish to curtail his freedom of speech. As such, he arranged a choir to sing a song consisting entirely of those swear words outside his show afterwards, a video of which appeared on the Mail Online with almost every word bleeped out (everything apart from ‘cunny’). Hilarious!

He is smart, witty, vulgar, challenging, righteous and preachy but right on the nose. He may be too old to flirt anymore but this audience loved him and his message. His three dates at the Tron are sold out and on the strength of this material, I can understand why.