Ian Brown & Dirty Vegas – Medinat Arena, Dubai – 1/10/09
3/5
By: Andy Willson
Set List - 'I Wanna Be Adored','Goodbye To The Broken','Love Like A Fountain', 'Sister Rose', 'Waterfall', 'Time Is My Everything' ,'Save Us', 'Golden Gaze', 'Keep What Ya Got', 'Longsight M13', 'Crowning Of The Poor','Stellify','Fools Gold','F.E.A.R.','Stellify'
As a live venue you'd be hard pushed to find a more scenic and captivating place than the Medinat Arena. But Dubai itself is the bling of the Middle East, so it can justify having such an amazing venue. The Medinat Arena is part of one of the many souks here, being surrounded by a lagoon with countless gondolas to take you around. You are also within touching distance of the beach and the Burj al Arab, the most luxurious hotel in the world. The walk up to the venue is worth the ticket price alone. You arrive through a sea of palm trees covered in thousands of lights, as if entering a mystical world. Tonight's gig is the opener for the first Dubai music festival being held in November, headlined by The Human League, Echo & The Bunnymen and Happy Mondays - SoundCity Dubai is being dubbed The World's Hottest Winter Music Festival.
Support tonight comes from a well received Dirty Vegas returning to music after few years break. They fully justify this role, working their way through an eclectic back catalogue (‘Walk Into The Sun’ being the standout) to an enthusiastic crowd made up mainly of expats. Once their set is over it's almost midnight, but there will still be time for a DJ set by them after Ian Brown to take us up to 3am. It is a Thursday night, so the weekend begins here (the weekend here is Friday & Saturday for those who didn't know).
Ian's band take to the stage and as the opening bass line kicks in, the crowd go mental. By the looks of the age range here there are some people hearing the intro to ‘I Wanna Be Adored’ for the first time in their lives and for others it's a bit of nostalgia. Ian plods through the set in his traditional
marching style shaking his tambourine as he goes. The stage is positioned between 2 large screens which show psychedelic images and visually distorts what's going on onstage. Ian's voice is a bit off key tonight and the choice of tunes is a bit dubious, but when ‘ She’s A Waterfall’ and ‘Time Is My Everything’ are played back to back, the pace picks up a little. For a 46 year old, Ian's still got the moves, but looks like he needs more time in between songs to catch his breath again.
Things go a little strange during the encore. Not a bad way to start with ‘Fools Gold’, but it gets rudely interrupted and the band stop on Ian's command as a scuffle breaks out between the crowd and security. Ian is yelling for the guy in the audience to be left alone, but the security guards seem to be on a mission. It's unclear what happened but rumours are that a guy in the crowd had a tattoo of the Rose's lyrics to ‘I Am The Resurrection’ on his back and Ian was amazed by this, but the security got the wrong end of the stick and started battering him..! Things eventually calm down and ‘F.E.A.R’ and a second showing for ‘Stellify’ close proceedings.
Tonight was not vintage Ian Brown by any stretch of the imagination. There were a few classics missing (‘Illegal Attacks’, ‘My Star’ and ‘Corpses In Their Mouths’ to name a few), but a bit of Roses magic almost transports you back 20 years to the heights of Manchester, when Oasis were just a twinkle in Liam's eye.
Artists in this article: Dirty Vegas, Ian Brown
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