What: Pink
Where: Manchester M.E.N
When: 24th October
Reviewed by: Mark Hudson
Its 9.00 pm at the Manchester Evening News Arena, it’s a sold out crowd and Pink should be on any minute now according to the show schedule! A long 35 minutes later the lights dim down and the entrance music starts.
ACDC’s highway to hell kicks in and all is forgotten about the half and hour wait. The curtains around the stage drop to show a funhouse set compiled of a waltzer car where the drum kit is placed, stairs up either side to a raised platform that has slides in the middle.
Pinks entrance was unexpected has she is raised from beneath the stage walkway that is in the middle of the arena floor. She’s carried around 10ft in the air to the main stage with a coloured feather trailing on the floor.
She sounds amazing as she works her way through her catalogue of songs such as ‘Bad Attitude’ ‘So What’ and ‘Sober’. The backing singers sound great too with dancers and the band taking on all different roles in the performance such as bass, violins, guitars vocals and performing fun house tricks you would find in a circus.
It’s the old hits that really get the crowd going and everything is going great and then in the middle everything seems to go flat. She performs around four acoustic songs that just seem to dull the dancing party mood everybody was in. This follows by around four cover songs such as Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen and Gnarls Barkley’s Crazy.
You cant help but feel a little out of pocket that you paid to watch Pink who kept you waiting for so long who then takes 15 to 20 minutes out of the set to perform somebody else’s songs when she has enough of a back catalogue to fill the set herself.
The set ends 20 minutes after curfew (due to the late start!) with an Encore of ‘Glitter In The Air’ which seems an odd song to end a concert with it being such a slow song that left you thinking is that the end as she walked off without saying ‘Thank you, goodnight’
Overall Pink is a great performer and I would go an watch her again but hopefully she’d arrive on time and put that little extra effort in to perform all her own songs instead of filling time with cover songs.
(6/10)
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Any stage-performer capable of instructing an audience (a London audience, at that) to point in the air, stare at their finger and spin eleven times must have something going for them… Mad as it may sound, this is a regular occurrence at Jason Webley shows, which he jokes is a humble accordionist’s cheap alternative to ‘getting wasted’! The crowd are invited to share in the cost-effective experience for his infamous ‘Drinking Song’, then slump arms around each other, sway and sing with him. The sense of community is like nothing I have experienced at any other gig, fuelled entirely by Jason’s undeniable stage-presence, innate charisma and infectious spirit. Mr Webley promises to be back in London in the spring, so don’t miss the chance to witness and experience the madness for yourself!
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