Lady Gaga - Born This Way (REVIEW)

Lady Gaga – Born This Way

4.5/5

In true Lady Gaga fashion this album is way out there. On first listen, you can't be blamed for thinking “WTF?”. But on second listen, it suddenly dawns on you, “Yeah. This is awesome”. Unlike her last offering, The Fame Monster, there is no skimping on quantity for quality. Born This Way  is packed full of both. It consists of 14 new songs that are incredibly addictive, definitely no filler material in sight. There are more than a few religious references in this album, forming a semantic field running beneath the songs and tying them together conceptually - either she's returning to her Catholic roots or trying to piss some people off!

The first single from the album, also called Born This Way, is an anthem for all Gaga's ridiculously loyal fans. It's so unbelievably catchy that after one listen I knew most of the words, which happen to send an inspiring message: to love who you are and never try to change. Unsurprisingly, the fabulous pop song is the fastest-selling single in iTunes history, selling a staggering one million copies in just five days.

The second controversial single, Judas, is also a hit in my opinion. Once you get past how crazy it all sounds, you realise you can't stop singing it. And I'm fairly sure that Judas is a metaphor for some sleaze-bag guy that she keeps getting back with despite him betraying her constantly, not another name for Jesus, as some confused American Christians have decided. Regardless, it is one heck of a tune.

Other stand out tracks on the album include: Scheiße, which mixes German, English and irresistible dance beats; Hair, a heartfelt song in the style of an 80's rock power ballad, about hair (of course); Bloody Mary, which kind of scares me, in the best way possible; and The Edge of Glory, another perfect anthemic pop song.

But who am I kidding, there pretty much isn't a track that doesn't stand out. They are all different and brilliantly unique. The album takes influence from so many sources, cultures and eras. The first track Marry The Night  sounds like a 90's dance tune, and is surely just as timeless, whilst other songs are obviously influenced by 80's pop and rock. In songs like Hair, Lady Gaga really shows off what she can do with her voice, proving she's not just a one trick pony by sounding like a member of Heart. Despite the likenesses you can draw to other music, it all sounds so new and exciting.

As an artist, Lady Gaga drips with talent and likability. The respect she has for her fans, and the respect she gains in return is admirable. Lady Gaga is all about the in your face excellence. There's no room for quiet brilliance here. I honestly can't wait to hear what she does next. I thought that she would struggle to top amazingly successful hits like Bad Romance  and Paparazzi  but i clearly underestimated her. There is nothing this woman can't do.

Yes to fairer votes!

The election's tomorrow (5th May) guys. Who's voting YES to fairer votes?
Here's some common misconceptions about AV explained courtesy of http://www.yestofairervotes.org/

The defenders of the status quo don’t want you to know what the change to AV really means.

They will say anything to stop giving voters more of a say, and defending the old ‘jobs for life’ culture at Westminster. They will say anything to defend a system that means:

* MPs can win seats with only 1 in 3 voters voting for them;
* MPs can have safe seats for life even though the majority of their constituents haven’t voted for them;
* MPs don’t have to reach out to secure over 50% of the vote in their constituencies.

But the truth is that the AV system is a small change that will make a big difference – making MPs work harder to get and stay elected, and giving you more of a say. No wonder the old political establishment will say anything to stop it happening.

So let’s separate the fact from the fiction….

Myth 1) AV will cost us £250 million

The only piece of equipment you need to vote with AV is a pencil.

The No camp’s sums, like their arguments, simply don’t add up. Electronic counting machines aren’t an issue in this referendum.

Australia has hand counted its elections for 8 decades. The £130 million of make-believe machines don’t exist in Australia and won’t exist in the UK.

AV will keep what is best about our current system – the link between an MP serving their local constituency – but strengthens it by making MPs work harder to get elected and giving voters more of a say. Short on arguments the No campaign are trying to claim we can’t afford change. After the expenses crisis we can’t afford not to.

Myth 2) AV is too confusing

Few people would be confused by this. Voters put a ‘1’ by their first choice, a ‘2’ by their second choice, a ‘3’ by their third choice and so on. The logic’s familiar enough to anyone who’s ever asked a friend to pop down to the shops for a coke and said, “If they’re out of that I’ll have a lemonade.”

Some people have a very low estimation of the British public.

Myth 3) AV helps the BNP

The BNP have already called on their supporters to back a ‘No’ vote. Currently because MPs can get elected with support from less than 1 in 3 voters, there is always a risk that extremist parties can get in.

The BNP have learnt this lesson, and have used it to scrape wins in town halls across Britain. With AV, no-one can get elected unless most people back them. Therefore the risk of extremist parties getting in by the back door is eliminated.

Myth 4) No one uses AV

AV is a tried and tested system. In Britain millions of people in businesses, charities, and trade unions already use it. Political parties use it to elect their leaders. MPs themselves use it to elect their Speaker and their officials.

When politicians are the voters – when they are electing their own leaders – AV is the system they choose. When you need a real winner who needs to speak for the majority AV is the go-to system.

Myth 5) AV means some people get two votes

No. With AV everyone gets one vote. The difference is that AV gives you a vote that really counts and more of a say on who your local MP is. If your first choice gets knocked out your vote is transferred to your second preference. Whether you just vote 1 for your favourite candidate or list a preference for every candidate on the ballot only one vote will be counted.

If you go to the chip shop, and order cod and chips but they are out of cod, and you choose pie and chips instead, you have still only had one meal.

Myth 6) AV means more hung parliaments

No. Hung parliaments are no more likely with AV. And as you might have noticed First Past the Post has not given Britain any special immunity to hung parliaments.

Britain has experienced hung parliaments in the 1920s, 1970s and in 2010, and had periods in the 1950s, 1960s and 1990s where a single party was unable to effectively govern alone. Canada, which uses First Past the Post, has permanent hung parliaments. Australia uses AV, and has returned its first hung parliament in 38 elections.

Hung parliaments occur if enough voters support a third party. AV gives voters a greater say over candidates in their constituency. How they vote is up to them.

Myth 7) AV means more tactical voting

No. AV simply eliminates the need for it. Why should we have to abandon the party we actually support, to prevent the party we least support getting in? The dilemma facing millions of voters is often characterised as the choice between “voting with your head or your heart”. AV allows people to do both.

AV offers an honest vote. It gives everyone a chance to vote sincerely for the candidates they really want knowing their vote can go further.

Myth 8) AV weakens the constituency link

No. AV keeps the link and makes it stronger. Politicians like to talk about their constituency link. And a lot of them seem to enjoy it a lot more than the voters.

Many of our MPs currently have a pretty dodgy link to their constituents. Barely a third of MPs can speak for the majority of their voters. AV strengthens the link by giving people the MPs they actually voted for. AV forces complacent MPs

Myth 9) AV forces you to give a second preference

No. You can vote for as few or as many candidates as you like. AV gives you the freedom to vote sincerely for any number of candidates you feel are up to the job.

You aren’t forced to vote for any candidate you don’t want. If you only want to support one candidate you can. Just mark an ‘X’ as you did before.

Myth 10) AV means you end up with the least worst candidate

No. First Past the Post just lets in winners that most of voters didn’t want. AV ensures a winning candidate has to work harder and go further to secure support from a majority. That’s what’s needed to be ‘best’, and may explain why politicians are so keen on AV when electing their own…

When Hollywood recently dumped First Past the Post for AV, they didn’t change the wording on the statuette to Academy Award for Least Worst Picture. They wanted a ‘Best Picture’ winner that could deliver on that promise.

Myth 11) But First Past the Post is a British tradition…

Our parliament is not a museum. There has always been evolution in our politics, and today AV is the logical next step - an ‘upgrade’ to First Past the Post.

The secret ballot, votes for women, and votes for working people were all innovations once, and met with opposition. These changes didn’t rip up the rule book, but they were necessary to improve the way we do politics.

Voters aren’t looking for a revolution. They’re looking for a simple change that preserves and improves on what’s come before.

Bickerton on Fitch

In response to W. Tecumseh Fitch's post "Musical protolanguage: Darwin's theory of language evolution revisited" (2/12/2009), Derek Bickerton sent the commentary presented below.

[Guest post by Derek Bickerton]
I yield to no-one in my admiration of Darwin. But admiration should not blind us to the fact that in many cases he was, inevitably, limited by the state of knowledge in his time. Not only Mendelian genetics, but also almost the entire ancestry of humans, was wholly unknown to him; ethology and the study of non-human communication had yet to be systematically developed, and linguistics still lay in the womb of philology. It is truly amazing, not that he was sometimes wrong, but that he was so often and so stunningly right.

He was right when he saw language as the seed, rather than the fruit, of human intelligence. But appealing as the notion is, he was wrong in proposing a scenario in which language issued from a "musical protolanguage". Tecumseh Fitch argues that his own account, developed from Darwin's, is soundly based on principles of evolutionary biology. It is therefore somewhat surprising that his account pays as little attention to the evolution of humans (and the ways in which this evolution differed from that of other primates) as do those of biologically-naïve linguists or psychologists.

The notion of a terrestrial and heavily-predated primate indulging in any form of vocal activity-especially one that must, in quantity as well as quality, have exceeded those of all other primates barring gibbons-is simply bizarre, as I point out in a chapter of my book Adam's Tongue (out next month) devoted to the "singing ape" hypothesis:

"What could possibly have been the functions of song for a pre-human species in largely treeless grasslands? Song as a pair-bonding mechanism is highly unlikely. Human ancestors probably weren't monogamous-great apes aren't, and neither are we, even if we try or pretend to be, so a monogamous interval at any time in the past looks unlikely. But suppose we did go through a monogamous period. If two mates don't happen to be out of sight of one another up two different trees, there are countless more effective ways of bonding than yodeling at each other.

"Human ancestors probably weren't territorial, either-at least not in the sense of holding small, well-defined chunks of territory. Most likely they had a fission-fusion social structure, like that of contemporary apes, that's to say groups would be continually splitting up and reforming, merging with other groups. In open terrain, where different groups might utilize the same areas at different times without conflict or even contact, what would be the point of noisily-defended frontiers?

"Furthermore, the terrains in which gibbons and human ancestors lived were such that for maintaining contact sound was essential in one and useless, even dangerous, in the other…On the savanna, where there are beasts with keen hearing far larger and more lethal than our ancestors, to sing out with any frequency would have been to write one's own death warrant. Moreover, the absence of trees and the level or undulating nature of most savannas means that, in contrast with the rain-forest, animals are visible at considerable distances. To be out of sight is, under those conditions, almost always to be out of earshot–there's little point in yelling and hoping your friends will hear you.

"To assume that, even if our ancestors had sung before, they would go on singing under these conditions is absurd-something you can do only if you think that behavior and environment are completely divorced from one another… Conditions on the savanna were such that while they lived there our ancestors very probably produced less sound than our ape relatives, not more. If this was indeed the case, a single source for music and language becomes highly unlikely. Unless, of course, someone succeeds in coming up with some function pre-humans had to perform, under those same savanna conditions, that they couldn't have performed by any means other than by singing. It's unlikely anyone will, but never say never in science."

To persuade us of the "musical protolanguage" theory, Tecumseh will have to come up with a scenario in which singing (of some kind) somehow increased human fitness. Here he has proposed mother-child interaction (as already suggested by Dean Falk in a recent article, "Prelinguistic evolution in early hominins: Whence motherese?", Behavioral and Brain Sciences 27(4):491-503, 2004). The problem with this is that all other primates have mother-child interactions, but only one has picked on this kind. Why? Why humans? And this doesn't end the problems that "musical protolanguage" raises.

Tecumseh recognizes that the severest of these problems ("the greatest explanatory challenge for all musical protolanguage theories") is how sound acquired sense-how a continuously variable medium with no specific reference turned into strings of discrete chunks with individual meanings. However, he skips nimbly over the solution:

"Supporters of the more intuitive "synthetic" model of protolanguage, in which words evolved first followed by syntactic operations for combining them (e.g., Bickerton, 1990), have subjected holistic models to extensive criticisms (Bickerton, 2007; Tallerman, 2007, 2008). However, I argue that most of these critiques miss their mark if the notion of a musical protolanguage is accepted as a starting point (cf. Fitch, in press). Jespersen/Wray's model of holistic protolanguage thus dovetails nicely with the musical protolanguage hypothesis, in ways that I believe resolve many, if not all, of these criticisms (cf. Fitch, 2006; Mithen, 2005)."

As I don't have a copy of Fitch (in press), I remain in the dark as to what these ways are. All I know is that when Dean Falk made the same proposal, I wrote a commentary that, inter alia, pointed out she gave no account of how symbolic meaning — symbolic use of words or signs to refer to particular classes or individuals — emerged from originally meaningless sounds. Significantly, she responded to all the points I made… except for that one.

Maggie Tallerman and I have made some very specific and pointed criticisms of the "holistic protolanguage" model, most of which have never been satisfactorily answered by anyone, as far as I know. If Tecumseh believes he can answer them, he should show how.

He does point out that "Darwin… embraces all three of the major leading theories of word origins of his contemporaries" but he fails to point out that at least two of these are incompatible with one another. For according to Darwin, "the attachment of specific and flexible meanings to vocalizations required only that 'some unusually wise ape-like animal should have thought of imitating the growl of a beast of prey'" (and of course that some even wiser primates should have understood what was meant-a lion coming, or lions often hang around here, or one was seen here last week, or "Gee, guys, see how well I can imitate a lion!"). But of course this onomatopoeic proposal is incompatible with "musical protolanguage", since it avoids the holistic phase altogether and goes straight to the kind of compositional, already-symbolic protolanguage that Tecumseh rejects. The "lion's roar" idea needs a good bit of tweaking, but at least it's nearer the mark than a holistic protolanguage.

A major motive behind "musical protolanguage" is Strict Continuism — the belief that language grew seamlessly from animal communication. Animal calls — if translated into humanese, and that turns out to be a very dodgy business in itself — are, like holophrases, often the equivalents of whole clauses: "Mate with me"; "Stay off my territory"; "Terrestrial predator coming — get up a tree". Split these into their components and for a few glorious moments it seems that the transition problem has been solved. But in Adam's Tongue I go more deeply into the transition problem than anyone ever has before. And it's the transition problem — how any species could get from a standard animal communication system to even the crudest and most basic kind of protolanguage — that lies at the very heart of language evolution, and without which all "explanations" are mere hand-waving, smoke and mirrors.

I know that Bickerton and Fitch are both friends of my Language Evolution lecturer Maggie Tallerman, so i can't help but imaginging them bickering in the school yard! Hehehe. I proper love this field now though. I think i may have a future arguing with these guys...

Article taken from http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1148 

A Thousand Lies @ Trillians, Newcastle. 25/3/11. (REVIEW)

Having seen A Thousand Lies perform a few times, I've come to expect great things from them - and i certainly wasn't disappointed on Friday. They are a group of amazing musicians and fucking rockstars. The awesome guitar and killer bass lines are only part of the band's massive appeal. The frontman's vocals are exceptional, with such a huge range, from dark and gritty to soaring and melodic. The band work so well as a unit; they truly captivated me at their gig.

A Thousand Lies @ Venue

The singer interacted with the crowd in a way that all frontmen wish they could. He exuded confidence and talent, and filled the venue with his immense stage presence.
Their performance was so full of life and energy. The guitarists' exhilarating riffs and gigantic solos were mind blowing and the steady infectious rhythms were consistently blasted out by the drummer and bassist.

A Thousand Lies @ Venue

What makes A Thousand Lies special is that, on top of their incredible music, they like to have fun. The frontman played this gig wearing a kilt (not to insult, he may not have been trying to be funny, but i was amused by the sight of a man in a skirt...)! Their new t-shirts, for sale at the gig, carry the slogan 'sesh on' on the back, something which their guitarist exclaimed multiple times! They also took a break mid set to give out free shots to their fans! It's nice to see that a band as talented as A Thousand Lies can still have a laugh and not take themselves too seriously.

A Thousand Lies @ Venue

Their combination of heavy metal and melodic rock really works. There was a damn good turnout on Friday, and A Thousand Lies' new songs were received very well by the hooked audience. Everyone at the front was headbanging and generally having a great time. This really was live music at its best.

I'd also like to mention that Convolution and Theia put on a really good show too. I just can't remember enough to write anything of substance. Brilliant bands all round.

7 Pence Mix Up @ Trillians

The special surprise of Friday's gig was the debut performance of 7 Pence Mix Up, a band consisting of members of A Thousand Lies, Convolution and Fyreon. They performed two songs, covers of Pantera and Damageplan. What a spectacle! It was such an amazing way to end the night. It was slightly difficult to fit 7 people on the stage in Trillians, but they pulled it off, and were bloody entertaining!

7 Pence Mix Up @ Trillians

Overall it was a fantastic gig, with brilliant local bands, who keep getting better every time i see them.
See ya at the next gig!


(I was too busy recording A Thousand Lies' performance at Trillians to take photos, so I have used some from the Ex-Fest Showcase at Venue).

Reactions to Tucson – The Inevitable Political Aftermath

The tragedy in Tucson, Arizona this January led to some interesting reactions and the usual cascade of news coverage. What I find interesting is how different these reactions were. Fellow Blogger Conform, Consume, Obey first got me thinking of this issue when he blogged two very contrasting videos from Obama and Palin.

Gabrielle Giffords

I had a look at the Guardian’s website and saw lots of articles covering the event. However, I immediately noticed a huge difference when I deigned to look at the Daily Mail. There are 2 articles on the fact that Gabrielle Giffords was Gwyneth Paltrow’s second cousin... (a point that the Guardian wisely didn’t consider relevant enough to write an article about) I mean seriously, overlooking the main issue just a bit! Just glancing at the headlines you can see the drama the Mail writers thrive on:

Police find photos of Arizona gunman, bizarrely posing with his firearm while wearing a red G-string, which were developed the morning of massacre
Gunman linked to white extremists: Loner charged after shooting top politician in the head and killing six

Compared with the more sober and respectful headlines of the Guardian:

Jared Loughner pleads not guilty to Arizona shootings
Gabrielle Giffords speaks one month after Arizona shooting.

Jared Loughner

With a story like this, the media always attempt to explain the horrific act by stereotyping the killer – deciding that he was obviously disturbed because he listens to rock music etc. The Pursuit of HappYness considers politics to be the most important factor in this tragedy, saying:

“It cannot really be disputed that [Loughner] was influenced in some way by Palin's ridiculous and hate inducing political campaign against the Democrats” 

and I too can see that the constant propaganda and hate is likely to affect people who aren’t all there to begin with, whereas Muncie Politics thinks that people have no right to blame the Republicans or politics in general,

“To place the blame on strong political debate is not only wrong, implying the possibility your words will somehow be connected to a mentally ill murderer is absurd. If you are conservative, Republican or in some way connected to the Tea Party you are to blame”. 

A certain degree of this speculation is to be expected, but surely it’s not the most important part of this story? Surely the miracle of Gabrielle Giffords clinging to life after being shot in the head is what the press should be focused on?

As usual though, it seems that political issues took centre stage, as people hit out at Palin over insensitive comments and her inappropriate use of the anti-semetic phrase ‘blood libel’, to quote her speech:

"Within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn”,

Sarah Palin

Damian Thompson says in the Telegraph (another respectable news paper) that Sarah Palin's use of the term "blood libel" raises two possibilities:

"1. She's so ignorant that she doesn't know that 'blood libel' refers to the myth that Jews drink the blood of sacrificed children.
2. She does know what it means, and blurted it out anyway."

On the other hand, some people weren’t upset by Palin’s use of the term, and supported her in saying that ‘blood libel’ has far wider usage these days.

"There is nothing improper and certainly nothing anti-Semitic in Sarah Palin using the term to characterize what she reasonably believes are false accusations that her words or images may have caused a mentally disturbed individual to kill and maim. The fact that two of the victims are Jewish is utterly irrelevant to the propriety of using this widely used term”, 

Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz said in her defence.

Barack Obama

Meanwhile, Obama focused on offering comfort to the victims families and praying for the recovery of Giffords.

"Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy and to remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bond together."

The BBC described his inspiring speech as ‘a call to moral arms’, and a speech ‘shot through with compassion and introspection’. His strength and humility brought tears to many in the audience. The difference in these reactions was quite apparent, even prompting an article from the Guardian: Arizona shooting: Obama speech and Palin's statement compared, and became a subject of an earlier blog of mine: Reactions to Tucson - Democrat Vs. Republican.
Jim Geraghty asks for some perspective in National Review:

"In the grand scheme of things, the idea that Palin used a phrase associated with one particular, egregious and historically recurring false accusation to rebut a modern false accusation seems like little reason for outrage. For perspective on what really is worth outrage, the services for 9-year-old victim Christina Taylor Green are tomorrow."

This being the point I really agree with.

What’s worse than Palin displaying her stupidity with a fairly offensive choice of phrase, in my opinion, is that this has become more important than the victims loss of lives. The disgusting thing about her speech is how quickly she brings it round to ‘me me me’ and POLITICS! I think Obama has the complete right attitude and reaction in this awful situation. As tempting as it is to stay on the fence with an issue like this, I think I have to side with The Pursuit of HappYness and most of the mass media in assigning some blame to Palin and her party. It seems that American politics has a way of driving people to the extreme, and it’s unsurprising when you consider the sheer amount of hate mongering that goes on.

Fyreon @ Riverside, Newcastle. 6/3/11 (REVIEW)

Fyreon @ Riverside, Newcastle. 6/3/11

It was a beautiful day in Newcastle, the sun was shining on the Riverside, and Fyreon were tearing the place up! As the lead singer Debi pointed out, it's probably the first time Fyreon have played in the daylight and it felt quite strange. Anyway, they had a good turnout for 4 in the afteroon, Fyreon seem to have a cult following of loyal fans.

Fyreon's sound is addictive. Their angry songs are full of genius riffs and amazing drum beats. The exceptional, raw vocals of the frontwoman are terrifyingly brilliant. Watching them interact on stage you can see a band who obviously love what they're doing and have a damn good time doing it.
All of the elements of Fyreon work so well together, it just wouldn't be the same without one of them. Their heavy riffs and infectious bass lines will get stuck in your head.

The crowd chanted the lyrics back to every song, and danced and headbanged along. It's impossible to not headbang at a Fyreon gig. They played an old favourite ' Be Your Name' and had the crowd eating out of their hands.

Fyreon really put on an excellent show. It was certainly a memorable gig for me, and part of a really cool event. They were technically brilliant and played a pretty much flawless set. As a group of musicians they are so talented, and damned entertaining! Get yourself along to a gig, they will blow you away.

Fyreon are playing at Trocaderos, South Shields on the 11th March, don't miss it!

http://www.myspace.com/fyreon
http://www.facebook.com/Fyreon

My Chemical Romance + The Blackout @ Metro Radio Arena, Newcastle. 22/2/11 (REVIEW)

My Chemical Romance + The Blackout @ Metro Radio Arena, Newcastle. 22/2/11

It’s been 3 years since the last time My Chemical Romance graced our shores on tour, and unfortunately I’ve grown up a lot since then. Compare: queuing from 7am in the middle of November (cold!) with blankets, food and sing-a-longs galore, to waltzing in at 7.45pm having already missed the first support band... It was so much more fun the first way!

The arena was surprisingly empty when I arrived. They were only using half the seating anyway, but the standing area was eerily quiet. I think this might have been better as two O2 Academy dates. In fact there’s no ‘think’ about it, it definitely would have been.

Anyhow, The Blackout burst onto stage after little ado to the cheesy as hell song ‘Lets Get Ready to Rhumble’ which they probably thought was hilarious seeing as Ant & Dec are Geordies... Despite this small set back they thoroughly impressed me with their first song. Their pure, energetic post-hardcore, is thoroughly addictive. The two frontmen work together exceptionally to own the stage and entertain the audience – from swinging their mics in the air to having to be pulled back out of the crowd by the same mic cables, it was certainly entertaining. The Welsh rockers are definitely a good live act. The music itself may be slightly generic, but the singers’ amazing stage presence helps you to overlook that. Someone commented to me that she loved them until they spoke... Well it’s not their fault they’re Welsh!

I found their set a little bit too gimmicky if I’m honest. First with the entrance music, then some sort of strange arm stretching aerobic session in which one of the singers proved he doesn’t know left from right, then making the audience sing ‘I whip my hair back and forth’ in an attempt to wake them up, and worst: trying and failing to get everyone in the standing section down on their knees, in order to jump up and mosh when they gave the signal (I felt it was my duty to inform them that they ARE NOT SLIPKNOT!).

 Aside from all this though, their songs were really very good. So catchy that I knew most of the words by the end of their performance. ‘Spread Legs, Not Lies’ was dedicated to all us girls because we’re all ‘fucking liars’, Old classic ‘I’m a Riot? You’re a Fucking Riot’ was met by excited screams at the front of the crowd (the people who’d actually heard of The Blackout), and they also played a song off their new, unreleased album ‘Hope’ called ‘Higher &Higher’ which seemed to go down well. They did a fine job of warming up the crowd for the headliners that we were all desperate to see.


Images on the screens from the new album concept heralded the arrival of the New Jersey rock gods, and as I correctly predicted, they kicked off with the intro track from Danger Days, leading straight into super catchy single ‘Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na)’. Without a doubt, My Chemical Romance just keep getting better every time I see them. Their performance was outstanding, musically flawless, and Gerard’s vocals have improved a thousand fold since early live performances (of course other factors have had an impact on the quality of their performance in the past). Their performance was technically so tight that we could easily have been listening to a CD.

I had some concerns that they would play entirely new songs, but I was worried for no reason; they alternated smoothly between new and old all night keeping all the fans happy. They even played some entirely unexpected old favourites such as ‘Our Lady of Sorrows’ and ‘Hang ‘Em High’, which made me very, very happy! As the first note of ‘Welcome to the Black Parade’ echoed around the arena the whole crowd broke into an immensely loud cheer – it was an amazing moment.

Gerard Way dedicated one of my favourite songs from Danger Days, ‘The Kids From Yesterday’ to the parents of all the teenies at the front. He said he was very grateful to them for bringing their kids to his shows etc etc. He also commented on their own age, and it was quite a touching moment to realise how far they have come as a band. They’re all grown up and married now. Living the dream. Yet they still care so much about the music, their roots, and their fans. I have so much love for Gerard Way, he’s a genuinely nice human being. As usual he asked the audience to look out for each other, and showed his appreciation to the security guys and everyone else behind the scenes. He also took time to thank everyone who follows My Chemical Romance around when they’re on tour and camp out outside venues. One of the things that make My Chemical Romance special is their connection with their fans and the amount of love and respect they command. One of the sweetest things I’ve ever seen at a gig was everyone making the shape of a heart out of their fingers in salute to My Chem. It’s obvious they deserve the adoration given by their fans.

The diversity of My Chemical Romance’s music really showed at this gig. One minute we all had lighters in the air during the hauntingly beautiful ‘The Ghost of You’, and the next we were all dancing our asses off to ‘Planetary (Go!)”. There was also a huge amount of immense guitar work from the legendary Ray Toro. He actually owned the solos, and he looked cool as fuck doing it. The solo to anthemic single 'I'm Not Okay (I Promise)' never ceases to send fans into a headbanging frenzy. The man’s such a genius, he should really be knighted or something. Ray is such an integral part of the band, his soaring riffs and heavy solos make the songs so brilliant, and as a live performer he’s nothing short of excellent.

They announced the end of their set on a solemn note with a wonderful performance of 'Cancer'. Just Gerard Way’s voice and a piano. It was so heart-wrenchingly beautiful I may have actually cried... I noticed that Gerard chose to not sing the words ‘never marry’ in the line ‘know that I will never marry’, because he’s married now - so damn cute.

It’s safe to say that My Chemical Romance are a great live band. They have proved themselves countless times. This gig was better than perfect, it was incredible. Their touring drummer was talented and very impressive; hopefully he will become a permanent fixture. I’m fairly certain My Chemical Romance have lots of albums left in them, and many more world tours to come. So next time they come to back to Newcastle, go see them! They’ll put on a performance that you’ll remember forever.

http://www.mychemicalromance.com
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