The Girl With No Regrets: Muse

As my eldest son, R, is a huge fan of Muse and they announced a new tour just before his birthday it seemed like a great idea to get him tickets as his birthday present (fortunately he agreed this was a great idea). My partner is also a Muse fan and has wanted to see them live since 2003 so he too was very excited about going. Now, I have to admit to not being a huge fan, in fact not really a fan at all. I thought their music was ok, although I absolutely love Psycho and find myself singing one particular line in my head when dealing with particular people. One of these days I’m going to end up singing it out loud though, lol. Anyway, I went along for the ride especially as it was in Manchester.

After a day wandering round my home town and introducing R to the delights of some of my old haunts we joined the crowds heading to the Manchester Arena and found our seats. By the time we’d booked the tickets back in September there weren’t a lot left so we were right up at the top in tier two which for me and R wasn’t exactly fun as we looked down from a great height, at least until the seats in front of us filled up and we felt a bit more secure that if we were to somehow fall we would be caught by the people in front (that was until it was pointed out there would be a domino effect..)

It’s been two weeks since the concert and I’ve been trying to think of a way of describing it other than AMAZING!!!!!! But I can’t. It was just amazing. And I wasn’t even a fan until about 30 seconds into the first song. Then they played Psycho second and that was it. You know it’s a good show when it’s finished and you think “oh, is that it??” and then look at your watch and discover that actually 2 hours have just flown past in an amazing, breathtaking blur! Now, I love New Order more than any other band on this planet and their show last year was amazing but, sorry guys, it was nothing on Muse. I still love you, but Muse were just even more AMAZING!!! (Am I getting across that I like it at all??)

I would love to talk you through it song by song but as I say it passed in a blur so I will just show you some of the photos we took. I must apologise for the fact they are not great quality as they were taken on my phone.

This guy, and another one, spent the whole show on the rig waaaaaaaayyyyyy up above the stage.

This gives an idea of how high up we were

Throughout the show these globes came out from above the stage and floated around above the audience and then went back onto the rigging again, they also changed colour.

At intervals throughout the show screens dropped down from the rigging that had images projected onto them. During 'The Handler' holographic hands appeared above the band with strings coming down from them so the band were puppets being controlled by these huge hands in the sky. It looked amazing (have I used this word too much yet???)

At one point during the show huge balloons were released into the audience. The idea, I think, was for the audience to knock them around and eventually burst them, releasing confetti onto those below. One ended up on the stage which the bass player popped with his bass and then of course the rest of them ended up on the stage so he chased them around bursting them to huge cheers and much applause from the audience. That was definitely the funniest part of the show.