dreamdust

a day without hyperbole is a day wasted

REM in Hyde Park

17 July 2005

Originally, REM’s Hyde Park gig was planned for 9th July, but the aftermath of the bombs in London meant that there wouldn’t have been enough in the way of emergency services free to deal with the 80,000 strong crowd, so the concert was postponed a week. Incidentally, I’m not afraid.

It was Suzy’s idea to go to the concert and although I wouldn’t class myself as an REM fan as such, I was keen to go when she invited me – if only to return the favour she’d done me by coming to Munich and Zürich for Hubert’s concerts last year.

Suzy lent me an REM CD so I could get to know their music a bit. I already knew “Everybody Hurts” and a few other bits seemed familiar and I soon fell for the piano playing in “Nightswimming”. I knew the singer was called Michael Stipe, but my REM wisdom came to an abrupt halt about there.

Come Saturday 16th, Suzy and I boarded a train at Tonbridge station and headed to Charing Cross. Our timing at Tonbridge couldn’t have been more perfect: we walked into the station, bought our tickets, went to platform 2 and got on the train; I don’t think we stopped moving!

At Charing Cross, we bought a couple of handy street maps as we needed to walk to Hyde Park from the station. And not actually knowing the way would have otherwise slowed us considerably. £1.99 for a remarkably helpful map was rather a bargain, I thought.

As was to be expected, a good deal of our route was along the centre fold of the map, so Suzy fought her map against the folds into a more helpful arrangement. We walked into Trafalgar Square and admired Nelson on his enormous plinth and the big lions adorned with tourists before wandering on under Admiralty Arch into the Mall.

We ambled at a pleasant pace (which must have been bordering on catatonic for Suzy) down the mall. There wasn’t much traffic, but a lot of people – Londoners and tourists – were out and about, which was lovely to see. We heard a bit of jolly oompah music coming from the guys with the bearskin hats (or big beavers on their heads, if you listen to Suzy) as they marched across the bottom of the Mall and down Stable Yard Road to Clarence House. Unfortunately we were still too far up the Mall to fully enjoy the pomp and circumstance of whatever was happening. Still, men in uniform can be enjoyed at any proximity. Which reminds me, I smiled at a policeman as he went past in a van full of other policemen and he smiled back.

We turned down Constitution Hill and at the end, used two subways to avoid stinky junctions at Hyde Park Corner. Strangely, there was someone playing the penny whistle in both subways. Once at Hyde Park, I stared cluelessly at the map at the gates before wandering off – giving Suzy a small turn when she looked round to find a space where Sarah once stood. We took what was possibly a rather roundabout route to the bandstand, where we had arranged to meet Kyle and Julie from ABBAMAIL for lunch.

Julie was there already, reading her book. We sat with her and talked while we waited for Kyle to turn up. We knew he was going to be a bit late as he’d sent us a text message. You gotta love someone who uses the phrase “I shall see you Anon” in a text! Suzy and I were good and put some cream on and we all agreed that Kyle would have no problems spotting us – three pasty girls together on a bench.

Eventually Kyle turned up and we headed into the shade of the trees to have some lunch and a natter. It was nice to see the two of them as I had missed the picnic the previous weekend. I’d also previously not really spent any time with Kyle and what a nice chap he is too.

From our picnic spot, we could see a queue forming at the gate to the concert area. As it was getting longer and longer, we thought we should join it, but it turned out to be the queue for the hardcore fans who had tickets to the golden circle. Julie and Kyle escorted us round to the general admission entrance and we said our goodbyes.

We joined the queue for general admission in brilliant sunshine and it really wasn’t long before the line started moving and people were going through security. To my right was an enormous cherry picker with a photographer way up high taking some pics of the stage. As she came down to earth again, her hefty male companion was quick to light up a cigarette to calm his nerves. What a pansy.

It was soon our turn to x-ray our bags and then we were through into the concert grounds. On the reverse of our tickets was listed the items we weren’t allowed to bring with us. Unfortunately, I had to leave my primus stove at home. Shame that. Had Suzy not previously traded her illicit 750ml bottle for Kyle’s 500ml bottle would the security people would have spotted it on the x-ray? Maybe a claxon would have sounded and she’d have been forced to leave the city. We shall never know.

I bought a tour programme from a yelling girl with not much in the way of a sense of humour. Suzy and I then headed for the big merchandise stand to have a look at the T-shirts. There were a variety of designs and I was pleased to find that there was a suitably small one available of the khaki tour t-shirt. Suzy bought one of the same design, so, if called upon to do so, we could always look a bit sweaty and obsessed together.

We then headed to the vast armada of loos on our side of the park. They were quite smart affairs: clean, still with plenty of loo roll and each had a handy dispenser of alcohol hand cleaner on the wall inside. The seat, however, was the highest i’ve ever had to manoeuvre onto and there was a split second where I thought I may have to get Suzy to help (and then buy her a vodka to get over it). Fortunately, the cabin was sturdy enough that I could push myself upwards using the door for support, without it flying open and me tumbling onto the grass with my pants round my ankles. Lucky that.

Next stop was the ice cream van, where we bought a couple of Calippos. £1.30 for a Calippo was a bit steep for us country bumpkins, but you just have to put it down to the big city experience ;-) Bladders relieved and sustenance in hand, we wandered into the seated crowd to find a viewing point. We walked beyond the first big screens to the next crowd of people, which led down to the barrier between the plebs and the hardcores in the golden circle. We plopped ourselves down onto the sun-scorched grass and waited for the music to begin. As we knew we had some time to kill, we turned away from the stage in order to tan our left sides while we could!

After a while in this spot, we decided that it would be wiser to move to one of the big screens. From where we were, we could tell that we wouldn’t be able to see anything of what was happening on stage. In front of a screen, we would at least be able to see who was making all the noise. So we upped sticks and retreated to the closest screen, sitting a little off to the right of it.

After x amount of time, the first support band came on: Johnathan Rice. He was quite cute. Then came Idlewild and finally Feeder. When I told Lauren of this lineup a few days later, she got quite excited. I’m afraid their pedigree was lost on me and while they certainly weren’t aurally offensive, it just wasn’t my kind of thing. Nobody yodelled. Actually, that’s not true – I did, very quietly to myself.

Then at about 8.20pm war es endlich soweit….

REM came on stage and the crowd went wild. Everybody around had been sitting while the support bands played, but rose to their feet as soon as Michael Stipe’s face hit the big screen. Strangely, and wonderfully, there was somehow an empty swathe before me in the crowd which meant I still had a clear view of the screen as those in front of me were far enough away that I could see over their heads. Through the course of the evening I only had to ask a couple of wandering people to move so I could see. A big KT Tunstall-style “woohoo” goes to the guy in the green t-shirt for checking that I could still see when someone arrived in front of me (but out of my line of vision) and another “Woohoo” for the woman in the black suntop, who checked that I could still see when she and her partner came to stand close by.

As I said before, I’m not an REM fan (or “rem” as I called them one time to see what Suzy’s reaction would be – turned out to be quite amusing) and I must admit that the first part of the concert was a bit like listening to someone else’s kind of music. Apart from “What’s The Frequency Kenneth”, I think there was quite a lot of stuff I didn’t know from their new album.

I think the show started properly for me from “Everybody Hurts”. I love the song and was so frustrated when I couldn’t get hold of either John or Lauren to let them hear it (or just crowd noise!) down the mobile. Enjoy the little movie – and how the whole of Hyde Park sings “sometimes” too early.

“Everybody Hurts” was followed by some rockin’ toons that I didn’t necessarily know, but were obviously well-known among the fans. “Electron Blue” was good – apparently the inspiration behind Michael’s makeup and the stage lights flashed bright blue – and a couple of songs later, Michael introduced Patti Smith on stage for “E-Bow To The Letter”. I’d never heard of her and at first something seemed to be amiss on stage; either Patti’s microphone wasn’t working or she couldn’t remember the words, nobody was sure. She was holding Michael’s hand and he was whispering in her ear before finally she came out with a great totally improvised vocal at the end. An excellent save which was warmly rewarded with an enormous cheer from the crowd.

There were three more songs before the band finished the concert with “Losing My Religion”. It was obviously another of their hits (I’m hoping my cluelessness here is coming across as cute) and the enthusiasm of the crowd for the performance was certainly infectious. Consequently it was the first track I looked for on the CD I’d borrowed from Suzy when I got home.

The band left the stage and the screens started listing the impressive range of countries REM’s tour had covered. Finally “London” was flashing up on the screens in enormous letters to the sounds of 84,000 shouting, cheering and clapping. The band returned to the stage (Suzy didn’t realise they’d gone in the first place) and stormed into a long encore, starting with “Imitation of Life”. After “The Great Beyond” came the other song I’d been waiting for: “Nightswimming”. The familiar piano notes of “Nightswimming” rang out into the dark and I immediately tried to get hold of John again. I ended up leaving 90 seconds on his voice mail – it was mostly crowd noise, but he was able to hear which song it was. I really enjoyed the song, even though I barely know the words – I’m a sucker for piano. At the end of the song, Michael climbed up onto Mike’s piano to watch him play – and to try and interfere with the playing. Finally he put his feet down on the keys, bringing the song to an end, and planted a kiss on Mike’s forehead.

“It’s The End Of The World As We Know It” was a brilliant number, followed by “I’m Gonna DJ” and finally “Man On The Moon”. This song was another I already knew and liked and each time it came to the “yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah”, the cameraman picked out a girl in the crowd who had this written on a card and the whole of Hyde Park was singing along – a great moment. The show was now over and with it the tour. Mike went a bit crazy and threw his piano stool into the crowd, where it was caught by a guy in the front row and finally Michael Stipe sang “it’s the end of the tour as we know it, and I feel fine” and was hoisted onto the shoulders of his bandmates and carried off stage to the sound of 84,000 people cheering.

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

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