I Don’t Do Sarcasm Anymore … I’m Post-Ironic

Located in what used to be the millennium dome, new music venue the o2 opened in 2007 and has since received a lot of good publicity with big names such as Barbra Streisand and Justin Timberlake performing there. Last week I had the pleasure, and I use the term lightly, of visiting the venue. At first I was very impressed; queuing indoors surrounded by lots of restaurants is great for winter concerts, the way in which the crowd is slowly walked into where the stage is located is a great way of ensuring people stay in line unlike other venues such as Wembley, where once past the bag checks, people proceed to form a human stampede. This good impression however didn’t last very long.

Now, before entering the arena I wasn’t very convinced about the fact that the stage was located in the middle with the crowd surrounding it in a circle, and now I know why. Yes ladies and gentlemen, of all the concerts I have been to, and there have been a fair few, this had to have been the most idiotically designed stage that my brain has ever had the pleasure of processing. Whoever the hell designed it must have gotten the blueprints from a Christmas cracker; there’s no other explanation as to why anyone, nincompoop or not, would want to design such a headache inducing arena. After spending just 5 minutes there I had already called my psychiatrist and arranged anger management classes. Seriously, who decided it would be a good idea to charge 60 pounds [$120] per ticket, and then have a stage so brilliantly designed that 50% of the time the artist was out of view to one half of the crowd? As if this circular piece of crap wasn’t enough, it also had the great skill of having a middle which lifted up and down. Now picture this: you have been queuing to see your favourite artist and you finally enter and are front row. The lights go down and the crowd begins to scream. The stage rises with your favourite singer in the center. Oh wait … no … what’s that … where did he go? Is it a microphone? Is it a speaker? No. It’s the guitarist, pianist, bassist and the rest of the fucking wannabe philharmonic orchestra surrounding the singer and thus blocking the view. Oh wait a minute … are they about to move out of the wa- … what the … what the fuck is that coming down? A … screen? Are they actually kidding me? Fuck off.

Despite all this, I do have to admit that this venue did have the best sound out of all the major venues that I have been to. However, I can sit in my bedroom, put a CD into my surround sound entertainment system and alternate between staring at a poster of an artist hidden behind some objects and a blank wall for free.

To summarise, this venue has more problems than Nicole Richie driving down the wrong way of a one-way street. Sort it out.