Brilliant! A lot better than I expected, they are great live. Huge screen at rear of stage, which showed footage/videos of the cartoon characters which Damon Albarn synced with perfectly when singing. Guest appearances from many stars from the new album, most notably De La Soul ! A six piece choir, two drummers, two keyboard players, 3 guitarists plus Damon led to a very busy stage - The Hydro can hold up to 13,000 though, so the stage is massive. Played a good selection of the older stuff, and the newer songs came over really well live - here's the setlist.... Setlist SHARE M1 A1 Last Living Souls Rhinestone Eyes Tomorrow Comes Today Every Planet We Reach Is Dead (Alt ending) 19-2000 Superfast Jellyfish (with De La Soul) Ident ("madam") On Melancholy Hill El Mañana Saturnz Barz Dirty Harry (with Bootie Brown) Intro: I Switched My Robot Off Ascension (with Vince Staples) Strobelite (with Peven Everett) Interlude: Elevator Going Up Andromeda Interlude: Penthouse Sex Murder Party (with Jamie Principle) (and Zebra Katz) Out of Body (with Zebra Katz) Stylo (with Peven Everett) (and Bootie Brown) Punk Feel Good Inc. (with De La Soul) Encore: Hong Kong Kids With Guns Clint Eastwood Don't Get Lost in Heaven Demon Days Played for nearly two hours, and it flew by - thouroughly enjoyable evening (except the tall bastards who ALWAYS stand in front of me - I need to get on a rack and stretch myself a few inches!) Off to the O2 Academy tonight for Shed Seven....
Glad you enjoyed it mate, i know they're supposed to put on a pretty good show. The rack seems a little extreme......get yourself a pair of platform boots for chrimbo
The Hydro is certainly nowhere near the top of my favourite venue list either, but a vast improvement on it's predecessor the SECC which was truely soul-less. However, some bands can pull off venues like this with ease, and Gorillaz last night were no exception. Unfortunately, the bigger bands rarely play the smaller venues - 10,000 fans with cheapest tickets £55, the maths wins every time, even taking into account the overheads, they're probably pulling in half a million for the night - not bad work if you can get it!
