Concert Review: Manchester, UK - December 18, 2000

Douglas Smith:

Well we're back after our last concert of this the twentieth century & I'm glad it was a CdeB with Spaceman in it :-)

There have been many excellent reviews of the UK December tour and I cannot compete :-) so this is a micro review hopefully outlining some of our experiences of the night

There were several fans on the same tram athat we took from Altrincham to Manchester Victoria ( the Manchester Evening News Arena actually overhangs some of the railway lines at this station )

& lots queuing for Big Macs at the only food spot actually in the Arena building but outside the doors

The tour brochure isn't - its a calendar. A tour brochure should have a city list at least :-) Similarly the merchandise was the most muted I've seen at a CdeB concert for years. The T-shirt ( 15 UKP ) in black has a tiny signature on the front and a city/date list on the back in silver.

The changes in the line-up from Astrid's postings were mostly minor

Beatles section :
Ticket to Ride
Nowhere Man

Solo section :
Carry Me
Borderline
Spanish Train
+ others
& Nilsson's Can't Live or whatever that is called ( YUK - we so hate this song ( it may be marginally better than the original though :-) I cannot remember what came before or after and for once I wasn't trying to remember the set )

For the unplugged section all the band except Mr Oxendale were seated in an almost circle with the Welsh drummer playing the bongos with the help of a small toy sheep from Sheffield :-)

Thought I saw Miriam ( with longer hair than before ) in the very front row - perhaps she will delurk and confirm this ( VBG) Sorry Angela I didn't spot you.

The security here was minimal - only the tickets were checked and the guy next to me had a very interesting digital ( still/MPEG ? ) camera Plenty of flashes going off even during Borderline and Spaceman

During Lady in Red someone collapsed in block E row E about seat 8-9 so many from that row had to go into the aisle while arena staff checked the situation - luckily the person seemed to recover quickly.

LOTS and LOTS of flowers but only a couple? of bottles of wine :-)

An awful lot of jokes at the expense of Manchester United after they had been beaten by Liverpool on Sunday & yes the railways joke was here too. CdeB seemed to have a lot of fun at times - he had to restart Revolution after laughing at sheep joke ?

Sailing away carried on with vocals from the crowd for a couple of minutes which was impressive.

Patricia was performed with the help of a very large bra thrown from the audience and thrown back and other items :-)

Spaceman was performed simply with a very starry background and Christmas lights on the drum kit. Plenty of La-la-las were very audible

A very excellent night :-)