not amused

Well, that was it. The long awaited Diamond Jubilee Concert in front of Buckingham Palace. The line up sounded great: Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder, Robbie Williams, Elton John...
I still remember the brilliant concert for the Golden Jubilee in 2002 with a gum-chewing Ozzy Osbourne on stage, Phil Collins on the drums and Brian May playing the national anthem on the roof of Buckingham palace - still gives me goosebumps watching it.

My expectations were high. The evening started without the presence of the Queen, with her husband in hospital I'm sure she had better things to do and the first 90min she certainly didn't miss much. Robbie Williams started the show but somehow was a bit of a greying shadow of his former stage persona, strange.
Then came Will.I.am, Jessie J., JLS, the unbelievably boring Gary Barlow with Cheryl Cole - if I were the Queen I wouldn't have turned up either!

The old folks were better but couldn't rescue the evening from dragging on extremely. The comedians inbetween ( Miranda Hart, Rob Brydon, Lenny Henry, Rolf Harris, eg.) were so far apart from being funny it was scary. Probably tried to hard on the one side and scared of saying the wrong things on the other.
I have had more laughs watching Royal Variety Performances in the past!

All in all it was unbelievably boring. The choice of artists and songs was so extremely safe and coventional, the quality of the singing and music (even star pianist Lang Lang played a wrong note) was mediocre. Alfie Boe singing "O sole mio", Renee Fleming with "Un bel di vedremo" - I felt like trapped in a "Best of classical music out of tv adverts" album!
Madness on the roof stayed somehow pale, Grace Jones was simply disturbing, Kylie was wearing unflattering pearly queen shorts and Gary Barlow's hymn "Sing" together with Andrew Lloyd Webber, well...

I didn't expect a second Glastonbury but a bit more rock, originality and briskness were much needed.
No, a huge disappointment for me...and I'm sure the press will write today how marvellous it all was. Hmmpf...but at least Prince Harry most of the time looked like I felt :-)

PS: I still don't wanna forget the positive moments: Tom Jones was definitely the best singer of the evening...and Prince Charles' speech was brilliant.