Mark Owen concert!

Last night, we threw ourselves away... but we made it out all right.

Yesterday my mother, Emily, Joe, Daisy and I attended Mark Owen's concert at the O2 Academy in Bristol. We got to the queue an hour and a half before the doors opened and my feelings, as we waited, were more of awe than excitement; I couldn't believe we were actually going to see Mark Owen live! The O2 priority queue extended much further than our non-O2 line, but we once the doors opened we managed to find a decent spot. The support act, Animal Kingdom, came on earlier than we anticipated and we enjoyed their songs, but the early start lead us to believe there would be another support act to follow. It turned out there wasn't; we realised this when we watched the rug, which Mark picked up from the set of Alan Carr: Chatty Man a few weeks ago, being laid out on the stage. The excitement continued to bubble up, then at 8:50pm the lights went down, the music began and Mark appeared! He started off with a couple of songs from the new album, which we weren't very familiar with as our (super deluxe, signed) copy had only arrived a few hours earlier, then he launched into the new single, "Stars" (available to download here), before Take That favourite "The Flood". By this point I was getting really into it, and still in disbelief at how close we were to Mark Owen, when a very familiar tune started and tears formed in my eyes as I realised we were about to hear one of my absolute favourite songs: "Makin' Out"! I put my all into singing along and dancing, while Em trustily filmed the song, and it was glorious! The rest of the show was the perfect mix of Mark's older solo hits, songs from the new album, and rousing Take That anthems, which were lovely to hear and sounded wonderful even without the other 3/4 members. "Shine" was another song which made me well up: I have so many memories attached to that song, which I didn't fully realise until we were there, hearing it live and dutifully singing along. Over all, it was an absolutely fantastic night that I will never forget!

An owlsome couple of days

This time two days ago, my sister, mother and I were getting ready to go to Owl City's concert later in the day. We arrived in London soon after 1pm and grabbed a quick lunch from McDonalds before looking at Buckingham Palace and walking through Green Park and St. James's Park. We then caught the tube to our accommodation in Southwark and dropped off our luggage before heading over to Charing Cross and joining the queue outside Heaven nightclub, which was already extending in front of the stairs up to the station. We spent one-and-a-half hours in the queue, nibbling on Krispy Kreme donuts and dodging spilt coffee before successfully passing through the metal detector and into the venue. We managed to get really near the front on the left side (from our perspective) and waited a little under an hour to see the warm up act, Matthew Koma. He was great, and after the show we met him and got a picture with him! The Owl City set began promptly at 8:30pm and was awesome! After the show we waited outside the venue for about an hour and a half and saw some of the musicians. The next day, we shopped on Oxford Street before returning home.

Matthew Koma

Owl City

Adam Young

Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday's alright!

Today I listened to Zooropa (the album) all the way through for the first time since I posted random snippets of the lyrics to Chelsea on msn and she thought I was going mad (that was fun...), and it was very enjoyable, from the first solemn, mysterious chords of the title track, right through to the last wails of the strange alarm sounds that close this 1993 gem.

This was while I was on the way to town for shopping purposes, and I did quite well, buying:

• U2 Best Of 1990-2000 plus B-sides for just £2
• Scouting For Girls' eponymous debut album for £2.50
• New Kids On The Block: greatest hits - £2
• U2: A Diary (Book) - £4
• Bono In The Name Of Love - £6

There are now only 2 days of the holidays left, and I have quite a lot of revision to do, but I'll post again when I can!