Status Quo was pretty good last night, Nic and I were part of the lucky ones that weren't totally fucked over by the Promoter/Ticketmaster, they changed the venue of the gig about two months before it, and we almost didn't get our tickets in time for the gig cos of a Ticketmaster cock up, however, we got our tickets and they were spot on (centre block, thirteen rows from the stage). Some people had problems though, the International Arena has temporary seating (which we'll come back to later) in blocks that are made up of rows of twenty seats, however, the Promoter/Ticketmaster sold up to thirty seats per row - lots of problems ensued and a lot of unhappy punters. The temporary seating was not fixed to the floor, it was silly little metal frame folding seats on a wooden floor, so they slid and tilted if you lent on them too much. I know of at least two incidents where people were hurt because of the seats.
Anyway, onto the gig, and another mixed reaction from me! They were awesome, it's the first time that I've been to see them since 2001 and the Drummer was new at that point and not really up to speed, but last night they were absolutely brilliant, now he's settled in he's brought a whole new dimension to the way they play, they've always been loud, but they were fucking heavy last night too, when they played 'Creepin' Up On You' - which on the album was an ok track - it totally blew me away, the Keyboard/pianist came out from behind his set up. picked up a guitar and it was crushing! The bad point is that they dropped my favourite song from the Set list! It's bad enough that because I've only been going to see them since 1991 I've never heard the full version at a gig - they've stripped it down from 20mins or so to 5mins - but now they don't play it at all! In fact they chopped about 20 minutes off of the usual gig length last night, so it was over a bit too quickly for me, but when you take into account Rick's health problems at the start of the year and that Francis and Rick are gonna be 60 next year I can understand why!!!
The train back to Swansea was late too, so the gig finished by half ten, the train not getting into Cardiff until nearly midnight (we did have a laugh on the platform though!), plus the drive from Swansea station back home, we got in just before two, so was a bit tired this morning!
