Wheelistically @ Claire.NU

Last week saw me naus­eous with excite­ment, anti­cip­a­tion and anxi­ety as that night (11^th April 2006) marked the attend­ance to my 5^th Placebo gig in 5 years.

In case any­one is unaware and this junc­ture, Placebo are to me what The Beatles in many ways, were to those scream­ing, faint­ing fan-girls amidst the heady heights of Beatlemania.

Whilst most other girls at school were carving love hearts into the sur­faces of “ancient” (circa 1960) exam­in­a­tion desks in recog­ni­tion of their devo­tion to Rob­bie, Ronan, Nick or in fact, any mem­ber of 5ive, I had this Melody Maker cover pas­ted to the front of my home­work planner:

The “cool” boys in my Sci­ence class would com­ment on what a “fit bird” the one in the middle was, to which I would take great delight in watch­ing them turn crim­son as I announced rather loudly that “her” name was Brian.

It all star­ted many moons ago when I was going through the com­puls­ory awk­ward teen Goth phase, where it was my ulti­mate goal to be per­man­ently mis­un­der­stood and write awful poetry and angst-ridden journal entries. I pro­claimed that this was my bid to “stand out” when in hind­sight; it was yet just another way to “fit in”. Albeit, with a dif­fer­ent group of people.

It was Janu­ary 1999, I was sat at the kit­chen table leaf­ing through The Source — a Thursday gig guide sup­ple­ment cour­tesy of The Sun News­pa­per, at the age of 13 and that’s when Placebo truly left an indelible lip­stick trace on my adolescence.

“We’re No Angels” pro­claimed the head­line, bit­ing its way out of mono­chrome obscur­ity and into my con­scious­ness. Two angelic Kohl-rimmed eyes stared with feigned inno­cence into my own and from that moment on, I was hooked.

Don’t be misled, this was by no means the first time Placebo had been the sub­ject of my undi­vided atten­tion, not at all — this was just shall we say, a defin­ing moment. A moment from which, hav­ing read the art­icle, I truly felt I’d “come home” (excuse the pun).

For those of you who are unaware of who Placebo are, they com­prise of Man­cunian drum­mer and father of one (daugh­ter, Emily), Steve Hewitt; gay Swedish bassist Stefan Osdal and the mixed US/European, petite, andro­gyn­ous, bisexual gui­tar­ist and vocal­ist (also father of one, son, Cody) Brian Molko. Those angelic Kohl-rimmed eyes? They belonged to our Brian, obviously.

Fast for­ward almost 8 years, Brian’s hair is shorter, the make up darker, and the ward­robe def­in­itely more mas­cu­line. With the guys hav­ing grown up, calmed down (slightly) and now mak­ing bet­ter music than ever (incor­por­at­ing 2 addi­tional musi­cians into their live set to give a stronger and more accom­plished sound), there’s even more reason to be hooked.

From Nancy Boys to Angelic Fruit­cakes, these guys have shaped my adoles­cence, adorned my walls and become a massive part of my life, without their music and pub­lic per­sona my world would be an indes­crib­ably dif­fer­ent place. Without Placebo, I would not have been intro­duced to the woman that is now my part­ner. Without Placebo, I wouldn’t have had the strength to not only accept, but embrace the sub­sequent res­ult of the sur­gery I had around that time. I owe so much of what is import­ant in my life to them and as con­trived and “Fan Girl” as those last state­ments sound, it is an undeni­able truth.

And so, onto the night’s gig:

PLACEBO — Meds UK Tour FINAL NIGHT — Alex­an­dra Palace, Lon­don — 11 April 2006

Capa­city: 8000

The Set list:
Infa-Red
Drag
Because I Want You
Space Mon­key
Come Home
Fol­low The Cops Back Home
Every You Every Me
Post Blue
Spe­cial Needs
Song to say Good­bye
Blind
One of a Kind
36 Degrees
Bit­ter End
20 Years

—————————————-

Meds
Run­ning Up That Hill
Teen­age Angst
Nancy Boy

The venue (good ol’ Ally Pally) although visu­ally stun­ning, was shite acous­tic­ally, ren­der­ing what should have been set list high­lights such as Space Mon­key a little rough ’round the edges.

The light­ing was enga­ging and the mono­chrome screens a nov­elty, though I must admit to miss­ing the usual “tour visu­als” and pro­jec­tion shows that I had become to asso­ci­ate with the “live” Placebo effect since the large European (read: French) legs of the BMM tour and the second UK leg of the SWG tour. The lack­ing visu­als were no doubt due to all other ven­ues on the MEDS UK tour being “small, club ven­ues”, with such intim­ate set­tings leav­ing the bells and whistles sur­plus to requirements.

I was con­cerned that the band would be quiet and stand-off-ish, espe­cially after read­ing that on past dates of this tour leg, they had been sub­jec­ted to some rather poor treat­ment by sup­posed fans, I need not have wor­ried. The three seemed chirpy enough, although only speak­ing briefly, they played a blis­ter­ing set list, their musi­cian­ship and Brian’s voice was without fault. Which, leads me to pon­der as to why the crowd was a bit lacklustre in some places and viol­ent in oth­ers, per­haps those that had been queuing since the early hours the night before had been on the bottle, who knows?

Des­pite the loon­ies and the lack of “feel-good” vibe I usu­ally asso­ci­ate with ‘Cebo gigs (Brix­ton Academy dates in par­tic­u­lar), it was the set list that stole the night.

The show opened with a stonk­ing rendi­tion of Infa Red fol­lowed by Drag and the cur­rent UK single Because I Want You, which had every­one singing along. (Unlike past ‘Cebo gigs, a crowd mic was set up and it was nice to be able to hear the fans response for a change.)

Then as Brian put it, the set list embarked upon the nos­tal­gia sec­tion with the band belt­ing out their first single (which was released a good 10 years ago) Come Home. A per­sonal “squee” moment for me as I’d never wit­nessed this track live before. It rocked, really it did and I loved the way there was a slight note/key (?) change on the first “Come Home” of each chorus — and much to my amazement, I remembered every-single-word, des­pite not hav­ing listened to that song for about 2–3 years.

The pace was then knocked down a gear as the haunt­ing bal­lad Fol­low The Cops Back Home swept the venue, with Brian’s vocals doing a much bet­ter job than when I’d seen this per­formed live and broad­cast on TV recently. This track, when per­formed live, swells to double its size when com­pared to the CD. As much as I love the song on the album, there was always some­thing about it that rang a little hol­low (a bit like Bur­ger Queen on WYIN). All this is rec­ti­fied when stand­ing feet from the band, I hope a live ver­sion is released as a B-side or some­thing. The crowd was then wound back up as the open­ing chords of everybody’s bouncy gig favour­ite and ulti­mate crowd-pleaser Every You, Every Me rever­ber­ated around the room — much to mine and K’s delight. What with it being “our” ‘Cebo song, it would have been a huge dis­ap­point­ment if it had have been dropped from the set.

I had high expect­a­tions of two of my favour­ite MEDS tracks, Post Blue and Blind and was not dis­ap­poin­ted by any stretch. Blind was gor­geous and emotive, with Brian seem­ing to be really into the song/gig at this point. These two tracks were inter­cep­ted by my ultimate-all-time-favourite-cebo-song-EVA!!!111one!! Spe­cial Needs (thank god it was on the set list — I think I would have cried if it wasn’t) and cur­rent world­wide single Song To Say Good­bye [Cue K: “Ooh, sounds a bit Dr. Who…”…will that ever get old?]

Now, if there’s one thing I love about see­ing Placebo live, its their abil­ity to take a song I dislike/feel a bit mediocre on (or in fact, a whole album in the case of BMM) and turn it into the most stomp­ing of gig anthems). This feat was accom­plished with One of a Kind, a son­ic­ally catchy and pleas­ing ditty with non-consequential lyr­ics, a bit a naff dance track really, or so I thought. Put it in a live con­text and this thing does it’s conkers, with bells on.

The 2006 ver­sion of the 1996 single 36 Degrees fol­lowed suit, this time (unlike at Wemb­ley dur­ing the OMWF tour) the “num­bers” seg­ment of the song (see below) was removed in its entirety (and for the bet­ter, in my humble opinion).

4 7 2 3 9 8 5 — I gotta breathe to stay alive,
and 1 4 2 9 7 8 — feels like I’m gonna suf­foc­ate.
14 16 22 — this skin that turns to blister blue.

Placebo rocked out with a rauc­ous Bit­ter End and then ended the main set with an orgas­mic 20 Years — the 25 quid entry was worth it for the outro of this song alone. Never before had I seen Placebo play like this before, on their knees writh­ing on the floor as the gui­tars brought the song to a cli­mactic and thun­der­ous end, Steve show­ing us that drum­mers really do “do it best” and Brian and Stefan tak­ing stances asso­ci­ated with ulti­mate axe gods, but own­ing and earn­ing every second of it. Fan-bloody-tastic.

The band returned to the stage for a four song encore which began with Alison Mosshart (VV from The Kills, who duet­ted on the album) tak­ing to the stage (look­ing intox­ic­ated and tramp-like, it must be said) to add her husky dul­cet tones to Meds, quite a treat as its not often you get “duets” per­formed in their ori­ginal form in a live set-up, it was also some­thing past ven­ues weren’t treated too, so I count myself lucky for the privilege.

Another squee moment occurred when the stun­ning cover of Kate Bush’s 1980s hit Run­ning Up That Hill graced the list, as I was yet to hear this one live too. Gor­geous. Brian hit a note on that song I never even knew he could reach, he really pushed him­self and my jaw was swinging on its hinges — espe­cially when you con­sider at this point he’d been singing (and smoking) for almost an hour and a half.

The night ended with a “heavy” piano ver­sion of Teen­age Angst and of course, Nancy Boy. It seems that des­pite the guy’s claim regard­ing the “Death of Nancy Boy” (see the Lim­ited Edi­tion MEDS DVD Doc­u­ment­ary), they aren’t quite will­ing to put this baby to bed just yet.

Although the night was accused by many of being some­what imper­sonal, all was executed in the name of pro­fes­sion­al­ism. This gig wasn’t meant to sound raw and be played in some dive to a crowd of 200. True show­men, Placebo were prov­ing that even with brand new mater­ial, they can put on a show so pol­ished you’d think they had been tour­ing this set for years.

As great as it would be to see Placebo in the com­fort, close-proximity and great acous­tics that ven­ues like Brix­ton Academy provide, when they play on their return leg, this set cries out for UK arena tour. If rumours are to be believed, we could be see­ing this trio gra­cing the arena-capacity ven­ues of our shores late 2006/early 2007… and I can’t wait!

Image credit: ©Melody Maker/NME Magazine. ©Yomi Pho­to­graphy, 2006, Sweet Prince Forums