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by Wendy We arrived fashionably late at the venue, bejeweled in our 2.99 diamonds from ‘top shop’ and not a Texas t-shirt in sight to a venue which can only be described as a cross between ‘the love boat’ (TV show from 70’s) and a Las Vegas Elvis chapel. For all the money there is in Monte Carlo – it don’t always buy taste let me tell you!!! I’ll set the scene. The ‘salle des etoilles’ (sporting Monaco) is a large semi circular room (900 people were there so I was told?) which has huge archway windows that retract along with the roof (quite impressive) and mirror walls, sparkly lights and a red carpet entrance way + the icing on the cake is the rolling stage which projects forward on the band’s entrance (was highly amusing!) We were allocated a table about 50ft from the stage, and I have to say the mix of the audience was quite amazing, ranging from young beautiful people to the elderly (no joke!) ‘twin set and pearls’ as we like to call them in the uk…the most bizarre collection of people and we did wonder for a while if this was actually the right concert! During the meal there was a support act/background music – who played cheesy lounge music reminiscent of an austen powers film and to no applause at all… Whilst all this was going on we were in hysterics at the thought of Texas coming on to play… what would they wear? we had visions of the boys strutting on stage complete with frilly shirts and velvet tuxedos and sharleen in a dress (picture the scene from sleep video at the bit in the club – that is the feeling for this night!!!) But NO! the lights go down and the intro for IDWAL begins to play, I see people look at each other like ‘what is this?’ and then Texas come on cue rolling stage projecting Sharleen – complete with biker boots and dressed in the usual outfit towards the table and polite applause. She did joke after the first song that she felt slightly under dressed. And then the crowd slowly came to life. I decide to stand from the start (a bit of dutch courage from a horrendously expensive bottle of wine helped, and I thought well I’m going to enjoy myself no matter what!) about 2 songs in I was hit by a piece of table decoration from behind (the Monaco way of asking you to sit down I presume… as we were definitely to far from the stage for the offender to have been aiming it at Sharleen – although people did throw some flowers on stage during the show). Needless to say I ignored this and then when we realized no one else was going to stand at all we moved down to the front and off to one side. Did see some people later try to squeeze towards the stage in the middle, but they were sent back to their seats… By about the 3rd song the crowd started to get into it in a big way which was surprising considering the audience profile and all credit to Shar and the boys working the crowd. As usual Sharleen took no prisoners and reminded some gentleman early on in the show that she was the one with the mic and he should know better than to wind her up although she did take a glass of champagne off him later on during the set. Michael and Eddie had their competition (Michael won) and generally the night wound to a close. I’d never have imagined we would go to Monaco and jump about like at usual concert but we did!!! I’m still not entirely sure what it was all about, and feels like the most surreal texas concert ever (like some Scooby doo ending to the weekend!) who knows maybe we’ll see them playing cruise liners next year? Strange but good night… would I do it again? yeah probably for Texas but hopefully they’ll stick to real rock and roll venues in the future… And well done to Neil who wasn’t well but played on anyway and did a great job! |