Musical moaning

Last night, I attended Alicia Key's fantastic second Hong Kong performance. I saw her in London and Hong Kong two - or even three? good grief - years ago, and simply had to go again following the release of the frankly brilliant As I Am last autumn. A friend sorted the tickets for four of us, and I was lucky enough to get a press ticket, so another friend joined us. I took the press ticket and went to sit alone, before we decided that I could get a friend to meet me with someone else's ticket and I could just sit with everyone else - it wasn't exactly packed.

I can't give enough praise for Ms Keys' musical talent - she has an incredibly voice and is an amazing musician, hopping around from the piano to keyboard and directing her band. She'd also clearly taken dance lessons since the last time, when she was rather awkward and white-person on her feet. This time, she'd toned down the moves, but what she did was simple and slick. She may have the voice of a diva, but she clearly doesn't act like one - there was one five-minute break in the nearly-two-hour show, but when she reappeared, she hadn’t changed. Clearly just had a bit of a sit-down and maybe a cuppa. Kudos, because she's a belter, and a very pretty girl who could have had multiple wardrobe changes, many more rest breaks and not really made such an effort (cf poor Whitney Houston who I saw in 2003; it was tragic the number of times she had to go backstage and she couldn't really sing more than two songs without a rest, so sad).

It was a fabulous performance.

Unfortunately, however, it was not a great concert. Hong Kong is fairly rubbish when it comes to hosting international stars. There is a good venue now, the AsiaWorld-Expo, but unfortunately it's "all the way" (in HK terms, 25 minutes on a high-speed train from the CBD is miles) near the airport. And they haven't really worked out a very good transport system - everyone crowds onto the train at the same time and there just ain't room.

But these are minor problems you can accept as part of big city life.

What's really, really irksome is the attitude of both audience members and venue staff. Venue staff will NOT, under any circumstances, let you possibly entertain the idea of rising above your station and moving to an empty seat in a row closer to the stage. Heaven forbid you consider standing in the aisles so that you can dance to the funktastic beats. And standing on chairs? Good lord, what do you think this is, a concert or something? They like to keep different ticket-price payers in very clearly delineated zones. We were in the back section, but had a friend further up who we went to join for a while. We were dancing in the seats, having a good time, when one of the poxy little guards came and asked to see tickets. It seems we were in someone's seats, but this was 9.20pm - the show was scheduled to start at 8. (Granted Alicia didn't appear until 8.40, but that's hardly the point.) If you can't get there on time, you don't deserve a good seat!

So we made our way back to our area, but stood at the front - by this time, they'd erected some metal barriers, just to remind us of our place in society. I haven't felt so much like a caged beast for a little while, so it was good to have the experience repeated.

The second incredibly frustrating aspect of the evening was that, despite their superior geographical position, nobody in the front two sections of the hall really seemed to be getting into the music. They all SAT there, even through incredibly dancy numbers like Wreckless Love, How Come You Don't Call Me and My Boo. If you're not going to a concert for the performer, the music and the vibe, why bother? Why not stay at home on the sofa. There was a lot of cheering, but come on. If you want live music you sit down to, go to the opera.

Last time I saw Alicia in Hong Kong, I stood up to dance to one of her many great tracks, and the girl behind me asked me to sit down. I offered her my seat, but explained that I was there to enjoy myself, and under no circumstances was I going to sit miserably through one of my favourite artists.

Being in the cattle pen worked out well - there were several other people willing to actually enjoy themselves, so a group of 50 (or maybe more, we were near the front) pushed up as far as we comfortably could to the barrier and sang and cheered and boogied the night away.

I'm hoping, at tomorrow's Travis concert, that people will be a bit more up for fun. At Backstreet Boys (yes, my musical taste is occasionally mocked) in February, we were a mass of cheering, screaming, boogying bodies. That was fun. And at John Legend (HOT) last year, the HK security tried to send the excited crowds back to their seats, but the great man's big bouncers were having none of it. Nearly the entire audience got up and raced to the front. I spent two hours six-people's-depth away from him. Now THAT was a great concert.