Two ambitious gigs : @DiscoMoves #WhenYourMotherGoesHome VS @LadyGaga #ArtRave

Two Gigs on Two Consecutive Nights:

Peculiar Disco Moves: The "When Your Mother Goes Home" Launch

Lady Gaga : the ArtRave Tour

Venues: 

Peculiar Disco Moves: Not one but 2 venues consisting of the historic Castle Keep and the almost as historic Bridge Hotel, both across the cobbled road from each other in Newcastle. The beautiful vaulted high ceiling and sandstone block walls with all the little stairways and room made for a very niche venue. The Bridge Hotel has a cosy upstairs room with delicious, reasonable priced beer. Simple lighting, mic stands and the usual stage furniture.

Lady Gaga: only one venue, the Metro Radio Arena no less, with a capacity of of over 10,000 and most of those seats taken. Beer expensive and bland, soft drinks equally as expensive, and the food follows suit. The stage was extended into undulating runways into the crowd, some runways went over the heads of the standing audience. The lighting was sophisticated and everywhere. The speakers were huge and the stage set was from the imagination of someone who has seen too much Charlie and The Chocolate Factory. 

Music:

Peculiar Disco Moves: Well-crafted pop songs.

Lady Gaga: Well-crafted pop songs.

Support bands:

Peculiar Disco Moves had: themselves playing mother-themed covers in the Castle Keep, followed by the feisty, very talented and triply vocalising Iceni.

Lady Gaga had: Breedlove, who I thought at first was a parody act with his ridiculous song about wanting to meet us at "Sex O'clock". He grew on me, and some of his songs were catchy numbers. Breedlove was in retrospect really rather good once we had to sit through the loops of Lady Starlight. I'm not sure why she was there at all, twiddling knobs, turning loops up and down. She got irritating, and irritated by the crowd losing interest in her by the end.

Ticket Price:

Peculiar Disco Moves £3

Lady Gaga £35-100+ and additional inexplicably high booking and credit card fees. We bought direct from the box office, the day before the gig, paying cash. Often big gig tickets become available in the last week of sales.

Photos:

Lady Gaga: We contacted her management months ago, but as we could see at the gig, there was no way a DSLR was getting anywhere near her. My phone camera sucks, badly. So Blogger has turned the poor photo into this:

Peculiar Disco Moves: 

Iceni

Peculiar Disco Moves

The Gigs:

Lady Gaga: there is no doubt this was an enjoyable spectacle. The penultimate gig of the tour it held some "special" moments as Ms Germanotta shared anecdotes and her love of the LGBT community. Apparently a gay person designed the set. She can dance, and sing, backing tracks did help out at times, but lip syncing was not an issue. It was a fabulous show, great songs, big wigs, crazy dancing troupes, a Lady Gaga sideboob moment, cannons firing stuff into the audience and that paper confetti stuff they pump out. There were numerous costume changes. One noteable feature was the effect whenever Lady Gaga had a lying down moment on the runway. People would throw soft toys, letter, clothing, dildos, until she was just prostrate in  what looked like landfill contents.

Peculiar Disco Moves : After a cracking set by the very talented Iceni, PDM took to the stage.  Peculiar Disco Moves are coming on leaps and bounds as a live band. Not only as a group but every member seems to be growing as a performer with their other musical interests. The increased frequency of gigging in the last year has had a real positive impact on the way they gel onstage. The playlist has changed as new songs have been added and some old ones have had to make way. The May 2014 release Lost For Words (Please Don’t Tell Me Please Don’t Say) was rolled out alongside such “classics” as I Don’t Want The World To End On Tuesday and of course the manic Johnny Disco was the finale. The new single is another kitchen-sink comedy but this time an ode to the troublesome mother-in-law to be. When Your Mother Goes Home got the feet tapping and some people tempted into dancing. There was a lot of appreciative talk from the audience at the end and it has to be just a matter of time  before PDM get the recognition they deserve.

When Your Mother Goes Home: The Video