Culture, Alienation, Boredom and Despair

Little Baby Nothing - Manic Street Preachers and Tracy Lords

So being me I completely forgot to take my camera to both the Manics and Madonna so I had to make do with my phone...with little success I have to admit. On the upside, there was a million photographers in the divide between the Golden Circle and the non-Golden Circle standing people at Madonna so I can pinch their photos.

Madonna:

Naturally Madonna was amazing! I loved every single second of it! Her voice sounded better than I expected, the show was amazing, I liked her costumes, I liked the fact that she didn't have that many costume changes so she stayed on stage most of the time, there was a good mix of old songs, more recent songs and songs from the new album (I prefer the 80s Madonna to the now Madonna really), I loved the Britney in a lift video thing...I don't get it, I don't really know what the point of it was but I loved it all the same...just publicity for Brit Brit maybe?, I liked the guitar playing Madonna, I loved being close enough to see the whites of her eyes and all of her teeth and her unusually defined cheekbones...I could go on.

The only thing I didn't much like was waiting from 5:30 when the doors opened until 9pm for Madonna to come on stage baring in mind the Golden Circle was way over packed (literally up to the railings and the stairs, evidently there's no health and safety when Madonna's in town) and there was no support act. We chatted to the people around us, took pictures of them with their friends (other people managed to remember their cameras), browsed through their programmes (I'm too cheap to buy a £25 12page book of artsy pictures that I could no doubt see on the net anyway, £15 is about my limit to spend on a programme and even then I hand over my pennies begrudgingly, I am from the tight fisted land of Yorkshire after all) but even that got boring. People had actually started booing by about 8:30 and everyone was fidgeting and my feet were hot and hurting.

Manic Street Preachers:

(Nicky Wire)

(I know this was supposed to be James Dean Bradfield but...I'm not so sure if you can actually make him out!)

(I've convinced myself that I can see Nicky on the right of the picture.)

The queen of pop was amazing but even so, the Manics were better. I loved the tiny venue (Newport Centre is a like a leasure centre and people were minding their own business swimming and doing aqua aerobics while the Manics were playing), I loved being so close to the front. They're probably my fav band so I'd have loved it no matter what to be honest.

I'm not a huge fan of Newport though, we got a wee bit lost finding the venue to begin with and happened across a bridge full of police cars and ambulances, as we drove over the bridge we could see a man on the wrong side of the railings which was unpleasent and on the way back over the bridge (having realised we'dgone the wrong way and turned around down a dodgy looking street) he was still on the wrong side of the railings but chatting on his phone. I hope someone managed to talk him down. We ended up parking on some wierd bit of waste land, purely because when it comes to parking, I'm something of a sheep and everyone else was at it so I followed suit. It didn't look the safest of placest to leave your car but a) it was free, b) didn't close at 10:30 like some car parks and c) no one could steal my car since someone decided to park behind me and then someone else parked infront of me and since I'd already parked between too cars I was surrounded on all sides so only a very persistent criminal wouldn't been able to to steal it. Maybe if they'd had a helicopter; or broke into one of the surrounding cars first, moved it, then came back for mine; or maybe if they'd driven over one of the other cars monster-truck-style, but that seems the least likely option since I drive a 1.4 Peugeot 206 not a Hummer, tractor, tank or similar.

Credit: Me (though I don't suppose anyone would be desperate enough to pass of my camera phone 'photos' as their own!)