With Just A Hint Of Mayhem

Music reviews, gig reviews, fun trivia and extra added random stuff!

Robbie Williams – Scottish Gas Murrayfield Stadium, Edinburgh, Scotland – Saturday 31st May 2025 June 9, 2025

Filed under: Review — justwilliam1959 @ 9:19 pm
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Regular readers will know that I have never been a huge Robbie Williams fan and that in fact I have been quite negative towards him over the years. That changed when I went to the cinema to see the Robbie biopic ‘Better Man‘. I saw him in a very different light after that. As soon as we returned from seeing the film my wife Catwoman (a.k.a. Catherine) suggested that we book tickets to see him in Edinburgh, so we did and here we are! So was Robert Peter Williams any good? You will have to read my thoughts on the support acts before you find that out.

First it was the Lottery Winners and this was the first time that they have ever played a stadium. This Manchester band are riding the crest of a wave after two UK number one albums and playing a number of UK festivals. Off the back of that I think they might be the perfect act to open the show on Robbie’s Britpop tour. Frontman Thom was incredibly excited just to be there and that carried through into a sparkling performance from the band. There were many highlights, “You Again” was great but “letter To Myself blew us all away on a wave of emotion. Next up it was Rory Charles Graham a.k.a Rag’n’Bone Man. I have loved his voice from the first time I heard his soulful baritone on his first album ‘Human’ back in 2017. I have seen him a few times since then, but this was the first time for quite a while. His band is incredibly tight and wonderfully funky. “All I Ever Wanted” was good but even that was topped when he ended the set with a two song knockout punch. First it was a supremely powerful “Human” followed by a stomping run through of the huge hit he had with Calvin Harris in 2019, “Giant”. The recorded version is good, but live it takes on a whole new life.

Finally it was time for Robbie to hit the stage. He opened with the first ever live outing for rocking new single “Rocket”. He took the stage bedecked in an astronaut costume and thanks to some excellent wire work soared above the stage while performing. When he came back down to earth and lost the spaceman gear he exploded into “Let Me Entertain You”, what a performance. It is clear that whatever you think of Robbie you cannot deny that he is a towering performer. Then it was time for an eclectic medley which included “Song 2” (Blur), “Seven Nation Army” (White Stripes), “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” (Proclaimers) and “Minnie the Moocher (The Ho De Ho Song)” to name just a few. If anyone in the stadium was for some strange reason not enjoying the show by the time “Rock DJ” was unveiled they would have had to submit then to towering take on a Robbie classic. An emotional highlight for me personally was “I Love My Life”, those words mean so much and I did shed a little tear.

“The Road To Mandalay” was performed while Robbie took a long walk to his C- Stage in the middle of the crowd. He was joined on the C-Stage by Thom from the Lottery Winners for a walk through some songs that might have made the setlist, well technically they all did, right? Anyway that included snippets of a few songs including “Let Love Be Your Energy” and one of my favourites, “Candy”. But the best part of the C-Stage set was the first solo live outing for Robbie doing “Relight My Fire” the Dan Hartman song that became one of Take That’s biggest hits. For the part that Lulu sang on the original Robbie was joined by the winner of the second and final Pop Idol contest in 2003, Michelle McManus. That woman knows how to belt out a song. An epic performance from the girl from Glasgow. Robbie returned to the Main Stage for “Millennium” and “The Theme From New York New York”. By this time I don’t think there was anyone still sitting down. I loved the emotion in “Come Undone” and in “She’s The One”. The latter was dedicated a a delighted and emotional Debbie from Dundee who was picked from the crowd by Robbie to give a personal serenade to. The encore piled on emotion, pathos and soul with “Feel” followed by “Angels”. There were not many dry eyes in the house at this point. Even I enjoyed “Angels”

Robbie made a point about not being cool which was warmly received by the crowd. He implored us to embrace our cringe and to get in touch with our inner twat! I have done both, and probably have done something similar for years. Mr Williams comes across as a supreme showman who knows exactly who he is and it is hard not to love him for that. Confession time, I am most definitely a Robbie fan now. “Angels” is no longer my least favourite song ever. In fact I loved it as the show closer in Scotland. Would I see Robbie again? Certainly I would. It rained a lot through the show but that dampened no one’s enthusiasm. This was a stunning gig, one of the best stadium shows I have ever seen. Finally a big shout out to the organisers for giving us such an easy bus ride back into the city. Thirty minutes after leaving the stadium we were back in our hotel room in the city centre.

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“I guess he’s an X Box and I’m more Atari” September 19, 2010

Filed under: News,Observation — justwilliam1959 @ 5:08 pm
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Hello good people of the blogosphere. The regular readers amongst you may have noticed that I have been posting for a couple of weeks, that is largely because I have been on holiday in Spain. A rather lovely place nestled about halfway between Alicante and Valencia. It is called Javea and is also spelt as Xabia in Spanish, the strange thing is though that it is pronounced with an ‘H’ as in Havea. one of the reasons that I loved the place is that it is not over developed and there are hardly any English Pubs. Is there anyone out there who actually likes the idea of English pubs when abroad? Most of the UK Travel Guides give barely a mention of Javea, possibly because it is quite a popular resort with the Spanish, so maybe it is wise to keep it a secret. Catwoman and I stayed in a villa that we rented at ‘mates rates’ from friends, from there we could walk into town within 25 minutes and the drive took 5 to 10 minutes. It was great to be sitting by the pool or on the beach with the temperature in the 90s whilst the UK was very cold and wet. It was really wet when we arrived back at Leeds/ Bradford airport last night anyway.

I won’t bore you with all the details of the holiday but I will give a special mention to a couple of bars we visited;

Siesta – appropriately named as they let you hire large sun beds with canopies, you almost feel like you’re staying in one of Gaddafi’s tents. Great cocktails, great staff and some excellent chilled sounds.

Jalousie Cocktail Bar – we never sampled their proper cocktails, but the non-alcoholic ones were delicious as were their milkshakes.

Acqua Bar and Steakhouse – Good food, especially the fillet steak

Atalaya – probably one of the most chilled bars in town, you can relax in comfy sofas and look out over the sea and the beach while you drink and eat. The staff were great here too.

Obviously I need to bring this back around to music so here are a few things that happened in the music world while I was away. I haven’t done much research on these, they were in the UK newspapers that I bought or I picked them up from an occasional visit to the BBC site or just spotting other people’s newspaper headlines. I must say though that most of the news revolved around the Pope’s visit, so I’m damned glad I was out of the country.

I wonder what Morrissey thought of it?

Lady Gaga – the lady did wonders for my viewing figures while I was away, just over 30,000 in two weeks including a one day record of more than 6,000. She won 8 of her 13 nominations at the MTV awards and to celebrate she wore a meat dress. I guess she was putting her ‘steak’ in the ground or maybe she was bringing home the ‘bacon’ or giving the ‘cold shoulder’ or simply just ‘hamming it up’. Anyway it appears to have provoked a lot of debate about what meant, frankly though who gives a toss about its meaning? She is a wonderfully talented fruitloop and therefore fully qualified to grab attention in such a way and long may she continue! The BBC report includes a number of interpretations which are quite amusing in their seriousness, click here to read it.

George Michael jailed (and transferred) for driving under the influence (of dope in this case). He started off in Pentonville and was then transferred to a ‘softer’ prison. Pete Doherty and Boy George have both previously spent time in Pentonville. I have so far received many George Michael jokes as I suspect has everyone, but I won’t print those here. However the picture below is a superbly intelligent piece of graffiti. It shows the shop front of the Snappy Snaps shop that George hit with his car.

Apparently Susan Boyle and Michelle McManus were booked to sing for the Pope, although apparently he was already on his way out of the building when Susan was singing. That’s bloody rude isn’t it? Still at least he has now left the shores of our little third world country. Presumably he’s back in the Vatican now drafting a letter telling all those kiddy fiddler priests that they have been jolly naughty and not to do it again or they will be grounded for a week!

Alphonsus Cassell aka Arrow of “Hot Hot Hot” fame has died from brain cancer at his home in Montserrat. Now I reckon a Facebook campaign to get the song to number one should be kicked off, what do you think? Here he is singing the song at a benefit for Haiti in April this year.

Sacha Baron Cohen is chosen to play Freddie Mercury in the Queen biopic. The film will apparently focus on the years leading up to what many see as the pinnacle of Queen’s career, their appearance at Live Aid in 1985. Personally I think that is a great choice, I reckon Mr Cohen will really do the role justice, what do you folks think? Here are Queen at Live Aid with, appropriately for this post, “Radio Ga Ga”

I want to finish with the stupendous new song from Cee Lo Green off of Gnarls Barkley, it’s called “Fuck You” and I love it. there will be a more radio friendly version available soon, called “Forget You”