Concert review
Newcastle University, 4 October 2003
by Malcolm

SETLIST: Telephone X / Inner Smile / Broken / Halo / In Our Lifetime / And I Dream / Summer Son / I'll See It Through / Black Eyed Boy / Where Did You Sleep? / Carnival Girl / Say What You Want

ENCORE: In Demand / Carnival Girl (Reprise)

Well, my tickets for this gig arrived on the Wednesday beofre the concert itself. As tickets weren't a guaranteed entry, I left at 4.30pm on the Saturday and got to the university for 5pm.

I thought with it being a Saturday, they queue might already be quite long. But, I was so pleased when it turned out that I was actually THIRD in the queue!! In front of me, there were 2 people from Preston who had been telling me about their adventure up to the Ramshorne Theatre and how the spent time with Texas afterwards - cheers!! The doors didn't open until 8pm!!

The queue started to get longer and the guy on the door told us that the hall only held 500. Radio 2 had sent out 700 tickets though!! We could hear the band rehearsing from the door. And we sawband members coming out of the hall and going back in.

Eventually!!! At 8pm (freezing cold), we were allowed to go into the hall. I managed to get right in the front, resting on the stage directly in front of Sharleen's microphone!! Couldn't have asked for a better view! The hall soon filled up and at about 8.45pm, Mark Goodier (Radio 2 DJ) came on and went through a few "rules" with us and made us run through a warm up for "going on to air". Basically played us the Radio 2 jingle and made us cheer!

9pm: Live to the nation! The band were already on stage when the DJ introduced the show and then we were off!! Telephone X opened the set. This has to be my favourite new track, it's just fantastic!

Sharleen looked great (still wearing a shell suit thing that looks scarily like something Anneka Rice would have wore in Treasure Hunt!). She was SO close to me it was amazing. There was a few time I just reached out and touched her. She grabbed my hand once!!

The whole set contained originally 11 tracks, but after Black Eyed Boy, I heard Eddie tell Sharleen that they had time to fill, so cue Where Did You Sleep?!! Fantastic track and glad they put it in.

There were a few guys in the audience who were annoying Sharleen and she joked with them to start with, but as she was singing I'll See It Through the were still shouting. She pointed the microphone away from her mouth and shouted to them "Shut the f**k up!". All the way through the song she kept looking at them with a look that said "mess with me and I'll show you!".

Kardinall Offishal joined Sharleen on stage for Carnival Girl - how tall is that guy??? Again they were running short and had to stretch out Carnival Girl - sounded good though.

After a great version of Say What You Want (Greatest Hits Tour version), it was the end (are so we thought)!! The DJ came back on, did an outro and thn we went off air.

Sharleen and the band came back. She asked the audience what they wanted to hear. Someone behind me shouted "Superwrong". Sharleen replied "People always ask for B-Sides!! I'm having trouble remembering the A-Sides at the moment! Great song though!!"

We got a fantastic version of In Demand and then Kardinall Offishall joined us back on stage for antother version of Carnival Girl - simply because Sharleen enjoyed being on stage with him. "Let's see how many versions of this we can do" she said.

After that, Sharleen said thank you and that she would see us next year!! Neil, the new drummer, fitted in weel and you couldn't even tell he was new!! Well done!! The whole gig was fantastic and totally FREE!!!!

Can't wait untill they tour next year. It was defintley worth my 3hr wait!!!


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