Face Of Cheam

This was a weird one. Having seen Avril before I was looking forward to this. Although her audience is young, she comes out with catchy rock pop tunes and can be quite heavy in some places. However, in the afternoon I tracked down a somewhat scathing review of the first date of this tour that happened a month earlier in Canada, which turned out
This was my first trip to the main arena in the o2, and it is massive. A cross between Earls Court and Wembley really. Having purchased a £3.70 pint of Becks and a £4.00 cider! We managed to get about a third from the front. Here, we noticed that her audience was much younger than her previous shows. In the seats around the venue there were many under tens, in the standing area, there were many a 13 & 14 year old girl dressed up in pink. I assume that the corporate friendliness of the 02 would attract more families and younger fans than the standing shows of Brixton and Hammersmith would when I have seen her previously.
However, my fears that I read earlier in the day were confirmed when the show started with ‘Girlfriend’ with dancers carrying flagpoles running ahead of Avril. Her band were on podiums towards the back of the stage as Avril ran around ahead smiling high up to the sides of the arena. After a good version of new album track ‘I could do better’, she introduced ‘Complicated’ as a song she wrote six years ago when she was seventeen. This was ok but the vocals were slightly weak and off in some parts of the song. At least the dancers were not on stage. However, worse was to come when they wheeled out the piano for ‘When You’re Gone’. A great ballad on record, Avril played a few wrong and duff notes, at least proving it was live. This was followed by four acoustic songs performed with Avril sitting cross legged on a bar stool with her two guitarists alongside her, for a change. These were much shorter in length than the record and ‘Losing My Grip’ really lost its edge played this way. ‘Hot’ was accompanied by a video of Avril being really vampy, presumably going for the FHMTV on Q market! After this they all left stage and a video appeared accompanied by her studio cover of Joan Jett’s ‘Bad Reputation’, probably recognised by me and maybe a couple of others only out of over ten thousand! To be fair as the stage was empty without even a bye or see you in a minute, not many people knew what was going on. On Avrils return, through a hole in the middle of the stage the dancers returned and after more offkey singing, a drumkit was wheeled on, which Avril decided to play and sing at the same time on another new album track called ‘Runaway’. After this she left the stage with a goodnight. A couple of minutes later she returned in a pink hoodie, with several breakdancers gyrating to a remix of ‘Girlfriend’. This really was awful. Finally she thanked everyone and played ‘Skaterboi’ where it really showed that she could not reach the high notes of the choruses that she could when she was seventeen! And that was it. Eighty minutes, with nearly twenty songs crammed in. It all seemed rushed and marketed like a Britney Spears show rather than a rock-pop gig, which is a shame. You would have thought that her audience of young teenagers of a few years ago would have grown up with her and that her crowd would be that of the 16-20 bracket and would want a rock show, where if anything her crowd has got younger! And as to mixing her show with break-dancing and bad choreography…… For £35.00 it may be sometime before I see her again, which is a shame given her previous shows in smaller venues where her music did most of the work.

Girlfriend / I Can Do Better / Complicated / My Happy Ending / I'm With You / I Always Get What I Want / When You're Gone / Innocence / Give it Up / Hot / Losing My Grip //// Bad Reputation (video) //// The Best Damn Thing / Everything Back But You / Runaway / I Don't Have to Try / He Wasn't //// Girl-Boyfriend / Sk8er Boi