Well I’ve had time to sleep on it and think it over so here are some thoughts on the concert.
First of all I should say that I’m not, nor have ever, been a big concert goer(?). Not that I don’t like music, ‘cos I do, it’s just that I find it hard to “get into” a concert.
The Royal Albert Hall is an amazing building. Opened in 1871 it really has that grandeur and opulence that one expects of great Victorian endeavors. It is almost perfectly round both inside and out and when you were sitting up the the nose bleed seats like we were you really get the feeling of being in a Roman amphitheater. Another cool touch was the fact that at the very top all the way along you had a standing section. Kind of the “really” cheap seats I guess 
The music started with the warm-up act. This consisted of young British talent Oliver Darley He did a set of about six songs and it was just him and a keyboard. Great voice! – powerful and tonally spot on. Go visit his site – he has some track selections taken from his album.
As for the main act – well to be honest I was a bit disappointed 🙁 Not that the music wasn’t good, because it was, but as I said in my comment on the previous entry it all seemed a bit self indulgent. Whenever any of the band did any sort of solo all the band would point at them expecting the crowd to applaud (which of course it did!) and for me it just got a bit tiresome. The band did it at the beginning and I thought they were just using it to introduce the band but no, it kept on going for almost 2 hours………………
BB King himself was amazing. His music was OK but the fact that a 76 year old can get out and do that show every night is nothing short of amazing (even though he sits down the entire show due to dodgy knees) Another problem was that BB’s (we’re on first name terms now) microphone was set up so that when he spoke (quite often) you could hardly hear him. Fine when he was belting out a tune but a lot of his tracks involved a lot of commentary.
One really nice thing that he did was spend 10 minutes after the show shaking hands, signing programs and giving out small gifts (couldn’t tell what they were, picks maybe?) to those people that went up to the stage.
So that’s it – I’m glad I went but it was definitely more an experience than a great concert.
Click on the link below to see a couple of very lo-res pictures taken with my PDA!
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Part of this magificent building
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A crappy picture but you can see how far away we were
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