Yes, but you didn't have to be there for that stuff.

well I care mate - the reason it's been a good thread is due to the fact that it hasn't resorted to mud slinging and personal insults as similar topics in recent times - and if the subject touches on 'oldies music' then i'm the first to jump in with my sixpenny worth...

A lot of performers on the night appeared to suffer from poor in ear monitors which is one sure fire way to sound out of tune when singing as you struggle to keep the pitch correct. Bring back the good old days of ramps of monitors parked along the front of the stage



What was impressive was when Alfie Boe and Renée Fleming sang Somewhere on the Buck Palace balcony yet were in perfect timing with the orchestra on the stage, a very difficult feat to achieve.

people alos need to remember they were singing, in effect, on top of a giant roundabout with little or no opportunity for sound checks etc.

I won't get into the rights and wrongs of it having gone ahead as I can't be bothered, but it does show that we're blooming good at stuff like that when we put our minds to it.

No doubt it will get Mr Barlow a knighthood, whcih will be a subject of debate for later in the year I'd imagine.

Renée Fleming is a classically trained singer and a superb one at that ! she shouldn't have any trouble with that kind of performance

The perfect timing would also depend on where you were listening from. In line with the pair and the orchestra could possibly be heard to be ahead of the singers, or vice versa. Only in certain positions would it be perfectly synchronised.

I always preferred Lennon to McCartney, but neither was as good as both together. The whole was better than the parts. I didn't watch the concert - I hate that kind of thing and I'm not a monarchist either, but I reckon Macca should let his back catalogue speak for him.
The stuff he did with Wings was garbage. Cliff IMO has never been anything else, at least they've got a roof at Wimbledon now.

totally different styles,personaliities and beliefs - that's probably why they wrote some great stuff together - Wings filled a hole in the market but would never have become anything more than yer average band without the big name behind it - Lennon was a musical master IMO who had so much to give to the musical and cultural world, such a talented guy and years ahead of his time - a great loss
As for Cliff, well he's just Cliff - don't really know if I like his style or not - he is what he is but I will always prefer his early stuff and certainly not the more mellow 'christian' junk of the past thirty years...

Cliff Richardsprofile fan seems to be predominantly women who bridge an age group ten years either side of his own, I have a friend who fits this profile exactly and she also adores Daniel o'Donnell, the Irish Cliff, I suppose there is a market for this sort of very cheesy singer who seems to cover exactly the same sort of song every time sprinkled with religion, but I'm constantly astounded that such a niche actually exists.

I'd much rather have Mick & the boys belting out "Sympathy for the Devil" any day

You've might as well be speaking about my sister. Cliff (for decades), O'Donnell, Sue Boyle ...

I thought that the concert singing was largely good given the nature of the site.
Some of these singers are a bit leggy, so deserve a bit of leeway.
Cliff started by trying to sound like an American and it didn't work.
It merely made him sound flat. After that he reverted to Cliff and he was OK.

Tom Jones showed what a fine voice he still has.
Ditto Shirley.

Elton John has descended into a mumbling wreck, but gets by.
He lost the high register of his voice years ago by shouting and doing his vocal chords in. So he invites the audience to do the high bits or backing singers fill in.

Macca was amazing. He starts too high, but even at his age can still get the higher bits out even though it looks like he has nowhere left to go.
Impressive Macca ... start a bit lower, make it easier on yourself.
He is brave though, very brave, lots of other singers would duck the high bits (Elton are you listening?).

Renée Fleming was standing too far away from the microphone when in solo mode, thus denying us the full power of her voice. Something that was rectified when she sang with a hand microphone with Alfie on the balcony. Her full power on display that time.

Grace Jones at 64 hoola-hooping and singing at the same time.
Different and memorable.

The others, Kylie, Cheryl, Gary etc were OK

The 'Sing' ensemble was fine, although one of the main girl singers seemed to be struggling with her ear-piece and her pitch.
But that is the beauty of live stuff.

I thought it was entertaining. Middle of the road stuff in the main that was meant to be fun. Chewing gum for the ears.

Pretty much spot-on, that. Apart from the ones I didn't see cos they weren't on the highlights so can't comment.

Not really only in an "acoustic only" environment. They would have had in-ear monitors, sent direct from the desks by the stage, they would have heard the music at the same time as the other musicians and their vocals would have been trasmitted back in the same digital manner as any short range device like their in ears.

All of it would have been put together and sent to the speakers.

Of course as they where behind the PA they wouldn't have heard anything of it and their in ears would have been louder than anything else to remove the sound travelling through the air timespace.

The range was not much further than musicians in large arena on opposite sides of stages or going out over or into the audience or to the other end of a long platform like Foo Fighters have setup at large concerts.

Pretty simple stuff.

Madness would have had a local PA mix and in ears too or monitors on the roof and the whole thing sent digitally wirelessly probably already mixed to the stage PA where the violins where added and then onto the main PA

Ha, ha, so that was what was stuffed in the Queens ears, bright yellow and very noticiable

I have nothing against "chewing gum for the ears" per se (great phrase, BTW), but is that really the appropriate choice for what was supposed to be a massive, high-profile, prestigious, classy celebration – and also one that was being screened around the world and, therefore, where we get to show off just how jolly well we do these things – ergo effectively advertising the UK?

no, but it was the ideal mix for a compilation album to make Barlow even more money and secure his Knightood for "services to music" even though pretty much everything he's ever written or sang was smalchtzy garbage (IMO)

I don't mind some schmaltz occasionally – and I don't have any particular problem with Barlow (I might possess about one Take That track, but am not absolutely sure). And I'm certainly not opposed to 'middle of the road' – goodness, I have enough of it (although that makes me wonder how one actually defines it) – but it does raise the question of what the concert was intended to do.

If it's pure bread and circuses, then obviously you create something that covers the widest demographic and offends the least number of people.

But let's take the Jubilee at face value. You're celebrating something that's supposed to be at the height of the nation; not just an individual who is (apparently) much loved, but also an institution that's at the apex of the nation's institutions – what dop you want to convey?

I'd suggest things like awe, respect, dignity – and, of course, good old 'pomp and circumstance', which we are supposed to do so very well, and which are supposedly things that make millions of people visit these shores.

Now I didn't watch huge amounts of the coverage. But that was certainly not the dominant thing I saw in what I did watch. The pageant was embarrassing, frankly. The barge looked dreadful and everything else looked chaotic and ramshackle. Obviously the weather didn't help and that's not the fault of any organiser.

To have given that event the real grandeur it was supposedly going to have, you'd have needed something that the bridges of London render impossible: tall ships; sailing boats. That sort of thing.

The [url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-18330492Beeb had commissioned various artists to paint it[/url. Again, obviously the conditions didn't help, but none of the paintings made it look impressive. The only one that I think works is the highly stylised pen and ink by Rob Pepper, but that, I think, is not because the flotilla looks magnificent.

Even the flypast on Tuesday (and I love them) was muted, since it only had three elements, instead of previous ones that have had many more aircraft.

Not a take that or Barlow fan particularly, but he does do schmaltzy garbage better than anyone else. Good songwriter (IMO)

it was bread and circuses, as you say.

More fitting would have been an extended trouping of the colur type event, with a classical concert, finished by the 1812 overture which is celebrating it's bi-centenary (not that you'd know, not a single 1812 200th Birthday concert in the UK from what I can find out)

Yeah – I'd have thought exactly that too.

Maybee some Dickens reading too, on the basis of the 200?

Who supposed all this?

In terms of a then-and-now concert, what more higher-profile names are there than the likes of McCartney, Tom Jones, Shirley Bassey and Kylie?

So it wasn't, then?

The Jubilee was [isupposed[/i to be cheesy and bland etc?



Coddy said it – the Stones.

I doubt they'd have done it (they were probably asked)

the fact that McCartney is closing the olympics is a really naff idea too!