Musings on Muse

We went to see Muse last week at Fort Canning Park. Now I wouldn't normally have bothered
with Muse in the UK but there seems to be a dearth or 'well known' rock n roll acts making their way out here so I thought it would be good to support it. Well the other 'big names' hitting these shores are El Divo and Cliff Richard (I assume before Wimbledon starts and he's required to entertain Centre Court).


The performance itself wasn't bad at all, although I suspect it would have been the same if there had been 10 or 100,000 people there (and those going to see them at Wembley will be able to test that theory out - at least we could see them in detail with only 6,000 people there). There was very little crowd connection apart from one or two 'hello Singapores' through the set. The gig was also lacking a support act, just a DJ which at $110 a ticket seemed pretty mean spirited, especially as Singapore has a thriving indie scene any one of whom would have bitten their mothers arms off to play for free. And of course, there weren't enough toilets. At this point I have to plug Bone Table (from Hong Kong) who Tom Kitten describes as sort of like the bastard son of Thurston Moore and Nico.

One plus of the gig was that even Beatrice was one of the taller people at the concert and as for me well, I had a virtually unrestricted view of the gig. I say 'virtually', because it was hard to see around the sea of cameraphones being held up constantly. Now I've seen this in the UK, but never on this scale. It became easier to watch the gig on one of the phones around me and select a view from the field of little TV monitors.

The other thing that was unique to Singapore was the heat effect that can be generated by 6,000 cramming themselves together when it's already in the mid 30's. You think the global weather meltdown you're experiencing in Europe is due to El Nino? Think again. As we know, if a butterfly flaps its wings in Tokyo it causes 10 acres of rainforest to spontaneously combust what the effect of 6,000 sweaty Muse fans waving cameraphones can do. Of course, the time honoured tradition to cool off the audience is for other audience members to hurl their drinks across the crowd, spilling them as they go. Which is great, except in Singapore, everything is served with ice cubes in it. I'd imagine that the effect is like 'ahhhh relief' followed by 'ouch, ouch, ouch' as the cubes land. Well they looked pretty from behind anyway.

Final reminder, we're hoping to make it back for Glastonbury, so if you want to see us this year UK side, get your wellies in now while the price is still low.