Rick Astley & Blossoms - O2 Forum, Kentish Town post gig thread (October 9, 2021)






Setlist was the same as previous night:

What Difference Does It Make? / Bigmouth Strikes Again / Still I'll / Reel Around The Fountain / Cemetry Gates / Ask / Hand In Glove / Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others / The Boy With The Thorn In His Side / Girlfriend In A Coma / Well I Wonder / Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now / Panic / William, It Was Really Nothing / Barbarism Begins at Home / Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want // How Soon Is Now? / This Charming Man / There Is A Light That Never Goes Out

Regards,
FWD.
 
Not sure if they were rehearsing the songs prior to the announcement of the gigs but if not it's pretty impressive that they learnt to play the songs as well as this in 3 weeks!
 
Anyone else notice the Moz WIWRN 'Marry Me' reference on the drums?

 
No, because I wasn't looking. What's on the drums?
It's more prominent on the top vid 'Panic'...

drums.JPG


plus noticed on the first night's performance of 'Heaven Knows'...

drums2.JPG
 
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I've been eulogising this gig to the rafters amidst my inner circle and I've concluded this:

If Rick Astley and Blossoms 🌸 took this show to the global festival circuit they would absolutely smash Glastonbury and every other site. I'm thinking the Sunday Afternoon 'legends ' slot where Dolly Parton caused a rupture in the fabric of space-time reality a few years ago and Diana Ross seems likely to repeat next year.

As a 'Facebook Non-Entity' I enjoy sharing my musings with old friends on Fcukerberg's Panopticon so here's the edited highlights from our ruminations on Messenger, etc.

Best wishes...

BB

'For the 'creator', Art is its own reward. Nothing needs to be bought. Nothing needs to be sold. You don't need to feed Big Music's corporate behemoth, grant that system control. As a young man, I watched and listened as a movement called 'punk rock' shook the world, now its icons are figures of ruined ridicule as I come to terms with being 'old-er'. Last night I attended a performance by Rick Astley and Blossoms which upcycled, revisited and brought back the songbook of The Smiths 'radical art collective' to vivid, resurgent life. I'm sometimes asked by 'those in the know', "BB, do you never feel any sense of guilt at depriving folk of the chance to see and hear your 'Show Of Shows'?". To which my answer is always a calm, but firm "No."

There's nothing new under the sun as the Maoist 'Year Zero' of the failed punk rock uprising showed. Popular music has been a 'busted flush' as political 'praxis' for decades, in fact, since the get-go. At my 'elite Catholic day-penitentiary', which I've renamed as St Shawshank, I was profoundly privileged to meet, love and grow slowly and indescribably painfully towards adulthood with some lads who'd 'throw shapes' and pose in the playground with cultural artefacts: books, vinyl records and comics and they helped begin my Odyssean Education. A riotous rampage of Jobriath, Sabbath, Heidegger, scince-fiction outlier writers, Ballard, Kerouac, Brautigan and the visual galaxies of Marvel. One day one lad asked me if I'd encountered Marcuse yet in Birmingham Central Library where I was a 'madam' running a 'gay4pay' prostitution book with lads, for 'security reasons' mostly from other schools like St Thomas Acquinas and the thug-rule emergent Officer Class cadres of the King Edwards campus nexus. We'd gently sigh at the obvious banal commerce of the desperate prole rent boys as we negotiated exorbitant rates with our slobbering hebophile freek priest base, a 'little black book' of customers, including the senior cops who protected us. I devoured Marcuse and other radical 'Frankfurt School' polemicists at the advanced age of 14 and Herbert provided the key insight of 'repressive tolerance' which I mouthed silently at the epochal punk gigs in Birmingham as 'the great rock'n'roll swindle' took shape and migrated from Art House fringe venues to prime-time centre stage as, amazingly, the actual, genuwine working-class audiences warmly embraced the genre before, during and after it went 'New Wave' to placate the corporate marketeers. Looking back, it was actually, factually fcUKin great but...I expected more of Music. I still do. The songs written by all four original members of the 'Smiths Family' radical art collective stand the test of time even as the various members poach and encroach on their youthful legacies of genius for profit, pension planning and all the rest if it. Marcuse was and is both right and wrong. Music is indeed a 'safety valve' which the Establishment Classes tolerate as fake Rebel Yell so long as it stays in the 'That's Entertainment' cage. In The Cage. Genesis were more 'punk ' than punk itself , as anyone reading Steve Hackett's extraordinary memoir 'A Genesis In My Bed' soon realises. So were Black Sabbath. So were Black Flag. So were Nirvana. Can we still say Tool are still 'punk' given the ticketing shenanigans they've embraced for their 2022 UK tour? I fcUKin think not! Lydon? A special case. Sui generis. Complicated. I got back to my hotel in Borehamwood after the Rick Astley and Blossoms triumph and had a little sob about the lost possibilities of 'My Generation', then did the 'man up-find a fcUKin spine' stuff. The Smiths should indeed reflect and reform with all four original members. Before someone dies. As a band, their inane lawsuits as part of 'my life is tour-bus soap-opera drama' is mild compared to the Borgia Borg hive-mind knives out of Fleetwood Mac, Yes, The Eagle, Genesis, etc. They should forgive even if they can't forget their various interpersonal betrayals. And they should reimagine their songbook, upcycle it beyond Reunion Karaoke For Cash Money €£¥₩, though given everyone else's absurd 'box set' antics: nothing now wrong with that. I was listening to Johnny Cash's incendiary version of the NIN track 'Hurt' as I waited for the valerian to float me beyond The Gates Of Sleep last night. I was thinking of what The Smiths could do in the studio with a similar quality producer-visionary. Without Bill Ward, it's not Black Sabbath. Without John Bonham, it's not Led Zeppelin. Without Phil Collins on drums, is it Genesis?...trick 'quantum' question, that one! (A: Yes-No-Perhaps-Maybe)...I've concluded that The Smiths were a channeled entity from another dimension who temporarily harvested those four hapless Manc lads and conveyed genius before it all went tits up. Could lightning strike twice? We shall see...the gauntlet has been thrown down by Blossoms and Rick Astley....comprehensively...#psykikaraoke

Ask And It Is Given
Seek And Ye Shall Find
There is no bifurcation
Oneness.
Tahwid. Talmud. Bible.
Trinity.
Body-Mind.
Shalom. Salaam. Pax Vobiscum.

BrummieBoy
...thee Pope of Pop, Punk-Rock and Prog.

Borehamwood Travelodge.
Sunday 10th October 2021...
England ...

...in the Planet Earth 🌏 space-time reality matrix pursuing the Baialurien Fleet who will be defeated as they try to destroy The Music Of The Interdimensional Intergalactic Spheres... (Coldplay?...bitch...please...sigh...)

#blossoms #rickastley

PS: shout out to the on the piss #ChelseaFC Smiths Contingent who embraced sober #Stoptober me at the gig...and to the other lads who tried to lure me to Da Club on the way out. Got them mixed up in comment last night as delirious and dehydrated from venue humidity last night. You know you've seen something special when you can't decide whether you watch the stage or dive head-first into the mosh pit. Reminded me of zenith-era Smiths gigs. At 61, I'm rarely blown away but Steve Hackett and this extraordinary extravaganza knocked it for fcUKin straight 6s. Scritti Politti gigs were pretty fly, too Green!
 
That was pantastic, Rick.
I vowed the same ting as you. Only first I'mma murder some A-ha.:thumb:
 
Well they play every song ten times better than Moz's band. That can't be argued.
 
How good would've have been if Rick had actually rickrolled the crowd and opened with 'Never Gonna Give Yo Up?'
 
I made my judgment of Rick yesterday by listening to that one video What Difference, and came to the instant conclusion that I didn’t like his voice. Then seeing all these videos I thought it only fair to give him another chance, and see if he can win me over with his singing on the other songs. Nope. His voice in this context is comically awful.


:cool:
 
Well they play every song ten times better than Moz's band. That can't be argued.

Well, they play it closer to the original, like a tribute or cover band would do. Though I don’t think all of M’s band’s versions of the song are that far from the original, except for TCM which is obviously them going out of their way to doing something different with it. But The Blossoms did a fine job, from what I heard in the videos.
 
Your caretaker needs to log you off and take away your internet privileges for a week until you're emotionally stable enough to post here again.
 
Oh Verso don’t be cruel to BrummieBoy. He’s a bit unstable, but harmless. Just like you.

 
I made my judgment of Rick yesterday by listening to that one video What Difference, and came to the instant conclusion that I didn’t like his voice. Then seeing all these videos I thought it only fair to give him another chance, and see if he can win me over with his singing on the other songs. Nope. His voice in this context is comically awful.


:cool:

You have serious hearing problems then if not only don't you think he nailed "What difference..." falsetto included, but even dare to say his voice was awful.
 
NME review of the London gig

There are only two people on the planet that could do this better, but until they patch things up, Blossoms, Rick Astley, and a couple of thousand loving fans, all singing in unison, is today the most perfect version of The Smiths you could possibly ask for.

 
No NME, you wouldn’t want to go to the pub with ‘Moz’s agreeable younger brother’.

sounds a bore. :sleeping:
 
‘But the fact both men felt the need to comment suggests they knew there might always be the risk of what tonight’s show eventually proves – this is the best Smiths gig since December 12t 1986, when Morrissey and Marr last took the stage together, and possibly boasts one of the best Smiths live setlists ever.‘

- NME



o_O:crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy:
 
I made my judgment of Rick yesterday by listening to that one video What Difference, and came to the instant conclusion that I didn’t like his voice. Then seeing all these videos I thought it only fair to give him another chance, and see if he can win me over with his singing on the other songs. Nope. His voice in this context is comically awful.


:cool:
I watched only one video, "There is a light that never goes out." He lacks the subtlety and stage presence of Morrissey. Maybe he was trying too hard. This is not a criticism just an observation.
 

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