UK Gig Review: Foo Fighters and Special Guests @ Hyde Park, June 17, 2006
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Line Up: Foo Fighters, guests Brian May and Roger Taylor from Queen, Motorhead, Queens of the Stone Age, Angels & Airwaves, Juliette and The Licks
Are the information signs for gigs at Hyde Park set up to deliberately confuse? They appear to be randomly numbered (entrance 12.6, entrance 98.a) and we walked the length of Hyde Park listening to Juliette and The Licks from outside the fence until we came to the entrance.
Still, we finally get in the correct queue and try to stop our picnic bags from giving the game away and clinking. As with most gigs / festies - all bottles and cans have their tops uncapped / ring pulls ceremoniously opened on entrance, so you spend more on drinks once inside. However this only applies to bottles and cans actually found, so there was an air of heady glee about my party minutes later when we entered complete with 1 litre of Pimms, lots of vodka and several cans of lager. Oh you have to love cool bags.
We didn’t hear a lot of Angels & Airwaves, due to the importance of finding a picnic spot of equal distance from the toilets and the bar. However, the nasal tones of ex Blink 182 front-man Tom Delonge soon distracted us from pouring Pimms, as we wondered if all Californians never go through the voice breaking part of puberty. Tom soon launched into a long diatribe on the pointlessness of war, which although well meant, went on for about 15 minutes too long. Ding ding round two with the Pimms.
Queens of the Stone Age came out to thunderous applause, mainly because everyone seemed so pleased nasal boy had gone. ‘No One Knows’ was great to hear live – they seemed to play an extended version as everyone was getting into it so much. Not bad at all, although their set seemed to be over within ten minutes.
Quiet interlude of Pimms (hic) and then on came Motorhead. Has Lemmy been chronologically frozen? He looks exactly the same as he did in the 80s. A friend who has seen Motorhead a fair few times told me that after song one Lemmy will tell Dave to turn the music up. Lemmy didn’t let us down – ‘turn up that music Dave!’ he croaked, and away they went. Can’t say Motorhead are one of my faves, but they sounded good and of course, ‘Ace of Spades’ went down very well with the crowd.
Everyone was standing by the time the Foo’s came on. A slight hiccup with the speakers was duly sorted and there they were in all their glory. They sounded fab – ‘Times Like These’ was amazing and when Brian May and Roger Taylor joined Dave and the band for a special version of ‘Tie Your Mother Down’ it was the icing on the cake, the strawberries in the Pimms, as it were. That’s if we had had any left by this stage.
It looked like they were having a ball up there on stage, joined by Lemmy and Juliette Lewis and her band. And we at the back, merrily leaping around and singing, were having just as much fun. Come back soon Foo’s, we lurve you!
Line Up: Foo Fighters, guests Brian May and Roger Taylor from Queen, Motorhead, Queens of the Stone Age, Angels & Airwaves, Juliette and The Licks
Are the information signs for gigs at Hyde Park set up to deliberately confuse? They appear to be randomly numbered (entrance 12.6, entrance 98.a) and we walked the length of Hyde Park listening to Juliette and The Licks from outside the fence until we came to the entrance.
Still, we finally get in the correct queue and try to stop our picnic bags from giving the game away and clinking. As with most gigs / festies - all bottles and cans have their tops uncapped / ring pulls ceremoniously opened on entrance, so you spend more on drinks once inside. However this only applies to bottles and cans actually found, so there was an air of heady glee about my party minutes later when we entered complete with 1 litre of Pimms, lots of vodka and several cans of lager. Oh you have to love cool bags.
We didn’t hear a lot of Angels & Airwaves, due to the importance of finding a picnic spot of equal distance from the toilets and the bar. However, the nasal tones of ex Blink 182 front-man Tom Delonge soon distracted us from pouring Pimms, as we wondered if all Californians never go through the voice breaking part of puberty. Tom soon launched into a long diatribe on the pointlessness of war, which although well meant, went on for about 15 minutes too long. Ding ding round two with the Pimms.
Queens of the Stone Age came out to thunderous applause, mainly because everyone seemed so pleased nasal boy had gone. ‘No One Knows’ was great to hear live – they seemed to play an extended version as everyone was getting into it so much. Not bad at all, although their set seemed to be over within ten minutes.
Quiet interlude of Pimms (hic) and then on came Motorhead. Has Lemmy been chronologically frozen? He looks exactly the same as he did in the 80s. A friend who has seen Motorhead a fair few times told me that after song one Lemmy will tell Dave to turn the music up. Lemmy didn’t let us down – ‘turn up that music Dave!’ he croaked, and away they went. Can’t say Motorhead are one of my faves, but they sounded good and of course, ‘Ace of Spades’ went down very well with the crowd.
Everyone was standing by the time the Foo’s came on. A slight hiccup with the speakers was duly sorted and there they were in all their glory. They sounded fab – ‘Times Like These’ was amazing and when Brian May and Roger Taylor joined Dave and the band for a special version of ‘Tie Your Mother Down’ it was the icing on the cake, the strawberries in the Pimms, as it were. That’s if we had had any left by this stage.
It looked like they were having a ball up there on stage, joined by Lemmy and Juliette Lewis and her band. And we at the back, merrily leaping around and singing, were having just as much fun. Come back soon Foo’s, we lurve you!
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