Fan's Review written by Reyna:
Concert Review (including sound check)
30th September 1999.
It was 9am. Skipped another day of school. The Suede concert was about to begin in 11 hours time. Yet already at that time, we were all feeling so restless. We had bought the freestanding tickets before it was even officially released for sale to the public.
We had to arrive to the concert hall early so as to get the best view of the performance of our once-called favourite band of all time. After waiting for 2 L-O-N-G years, gosh, Suede are really here.
Noreen and I went there with Dave, minus Lisa, as she was all too excited and too worried of not getting to stand in front row that she rushed there well ahead of us.
It was 2pm, and there we were, standing behind closed doors of the harbour pavilion. There were already quite a number of suede-heads… some were even there as early as 7am. Suede-fanatics, I presume. The spirit was clearly seen. A good sign!
Heavy make-ups, glitters, hair-dyes….we were busy decorating ourselves there while letting the hours go by. Yes we were really typical Suede fans.
I looked at my watch, which displayed 4pm. We decided to go to the ‘backyard’ of the indoor stadium with the expectation that Suede might arrive for a sound check.. Minutes later, their vans arrived!!! Brett, Richard and Simon were in it!! Coming out of the van, Richard gave us a cracked smile. He nodded and walked towards the door, his head low. Well, he was shy, y’see. Simon waved and said hi to us! Brett in turn gave us a shocking look, pretending that he didn’t know we were his fans. Lol! Man, we loved every minute of disturbing them.
Mat and Neil would be arriving in another van. And again, we waited. A ten-minute wait was like an eternity for us! Noreen stared into blank space until she jumped up shouting there was the van!! Yeah Mat and Neil were inside!!!
Nina gave Mat her little gift as well as a “Hello Panda” chocolate box, which she asked to be given to Richard. Well you should understand that Richard needed his food sometimes! Well, and according to Lizzie, the Panda on the box looked like Richard!! LOL!! Neil was gorgeous, except that he was too fucking pale. (shrugs) Mat and Neil went straight to the stage, and we couldn’t get through because of some hostile bodyguards barring our way.
We then went back to our respective queues and listened to Suede doing their sound check. We actually begged the crews to allow us in and watched Suede just for a little while. We even proved them that we were members of the fan club and that we should be allowed to be given priorities! No matter how hard we tried, still, it seemed that the crew won the argument, and so we couldn’t get in. But hey, I thought to myself, no band has ever allowed fans to watch them doing their sound checks. So, well, fine then.
When heard the music stopped, we rushed outside again. To our surprise, Brett himself was leaning on the door alone with no bodyguards around!!! Fucking hell!!! Of course we rushed to him!!. That was the time when we managed to snap some pictures with them. Mat, Neil, Richard and Simon were getting out too, but all of us stopped them for photos!!
I was standing right beside Brett. I didn’t know why I was so dumb as not to talk to him! It was all too messy that I became speechless! And that is Brett Anderson of Suede you are standing with. Who cares if I didn’t get to talk to him. I got to lean on him and managed to push him slightly further inside. Hah! Our skin touched and ooooh, THAT was really cool. Mr. Brett Anderson - the guy whom I fancy so much in videos!!
Then, me saw Neil and Mat inside. And Richard too. But I couldn’t be bothered much. (Shrugs) Then, Jayine spoiled my skin-contact with Brett by asking me to take a shot of her and Simon! Fine!! I did take the picture though. I went over to Simon and asked him whether I could take a picture with him.With a friendly tone he replied, “Sure!” :)
It’s worth mentioning this: I got a good shot with Simon and it was really nice. :) But then hey!! He’s Noreen's favourite member not mine! And she still hadn’t taken a picture with him yet! But where the fuck is she! With the voices of fans and Suede still echoing around me, I found Noreen outside the door. I called her to take a shot with Simon. Simon was busy talking to Jayine about that gift she gave; but Noreen had already posed for my camera. I called to him, “Simon, over here!” He looked at me, smiled and leaned forward to Noreen to get a snappy! Ain’t he nice? It took me a while to actually wait for him to adjust his position before posing the right one. Sigh. First, he was on Noreen’s right cheek. Then, her left… and finally, he just leaned backwards and there went the flash. Unlucky Noreen. I managed to get Simon’s furthest position from her. LOL!!
Oh no, here comes their van. Suede really had to leave, but we followed them all the way outside! Nina and Lisa were with Mat. I felt more uncomfortable with Mat now since he wasn’t as friendly or as hyper as I always expected him to be. I managed to take a picture with him anyway, together with Nina and Lisa. He wasn’t really looking at the camera when Noreen was about to take the shot at first, he was looking everywhere except the camera!! I noticed Noreen getting impatient and so I shouted his name to get his attention. :p He did turned anyway. Ha! However in that picture he was really frowning. Who cares! I never regretted for shouting at him. :)
Noreen then rushed off to Neil, who was making his way towards the waiting van, clung on to his arms and asked him for a shot with her. But he kept on walking, smiling and mumbling at the same time. For a moment I was angry at him! Why can’t he just stop for a second to get a shot with his fan who practically begged him for a picture? So I stared at him. Well it wasn’t actually a stare, really. :p Anyway, before he got into the van, he turned around to Noreen and said, “I’m sorry. We have to go. We’re in a hurry now,” followed by a beautiful smile! Gosh, THAT was a perfect smile! A million-dollar smile, really! But I could really see the cracks at the sides his lips when he smiled. Was he wearing a facial foundation or what? Gawd.
But Noreen was silly enough not to catch that beautiful smile of his! I was lucky that I did! I was right in front of him, it was really close! Ah well. :)
While Suede were already in the van, we were still flashing our cameras on them. I was standing beside Noreen and Brett gave the 2 of us a blowing kiss! Wa-Hey! Isn’t that sweet? Neil tried to hide himself from the camera by leaning as backward as possible. Fine! Before we even realised it, the van disappeared. Phew! We couldn’t stop giggling as we got back to our respective places.
Wow. The queue now had stretched really far out. It would only be a few hours time before the show begin. We couldn’t wait. We kept counting the minutes passing by!
8pm! Time for a big show, baby! All of us stood up. The people behind us began pushing even when the doors were not opened yet! Then there was this one thing that I will never forget. While waiting for the gates to open, all of us at the very front queue began singing some Suede tunes. We sang as loudly as possible, clapping our hands, stamping our feet, shaking our hips – all in one voice. Ooh I love it. The Suede spirit is getting hotter and hotter!
It was about 15 minutes later that the doors were finally opened. And I’m tellin ya, the push was intolerable – we rushed like fucking mad dogs inside, me barefooted. Inside, I got myself a good position. Standing on the left side of the stage, I was between Brett and Neil!! Cool! But closer to Neil. ??? I should be closer to Brett but hell, I had already wanted to take this place a long, long time ago… so… (Shrugs)
It was really frightening to see people rushing into the standing position where we were. I mean, gosh. I hope I wouldn't get crushed!!!
We waited for Suede for about 45min in the concert hall. And man, were we impatient. We kept shouting, “We want Suede!! We want Suede!!” And Noreen who was beside me on the left thought she had all the powers in the world to scream that loud for Suede. Oh my the whole world seemed to explode around me!!
Fucking hell. It was 8:45pm. And MTV VJ Jamie who appeared 10 minutes earlier told us that Suede will be onstage this very minute. I could feel my adrenaline pumping, my limbs shivering. Sometimes, I felt that the place where I stood was like a death chamber. I stared open-mouthed at the stage.
The lights went out. The smoke rose. The sounds boomed. Suede is here.
Brett was the first one to appear, and before I could even greet his presence, I was drowned in the crowd!! Screams and shouts from the fans deafened our ears when Brett, in his black tank top, shouted “Hello Singapore!!” They kicked off the performance with Can’t Get Enough. Mat was in a pink shirt (what’s with him?) and he shook his hips the moment the music was played. (I thought he didn’t shake anymore!!) Neil was right here in front of me, standing behind his keyboards, playing the guitar! Oh my Neil was gorgeous without the sunglasses!! Simon was too far!! And I didn’t have a good view of Richard too!! All of us shook our meat wildly to the beats. But we had to catch our breaths at the same time too! The squeeze down there was terrible!! Phew for a minute!!
Brett’s performance was fantastic. He could really shake, he could really sing, he could really entertain the crowds. At one time he snatched a reporters’ camera and another’s video camera and snapped some pictures of us from up where he was!! Ah fook!! Then, he flipped the cameras back to the reporters in such a way that they landed right in their hands! Some of the cameras were extremely large, heavy and expensive, mind you, so some angry reporters were not happy about that. But hell, Brett just wanted us to get involved as much as possible!!
I was singing together with Brett and for a minute I thought that my voice was really loud… but I soon realised that it was actually Neil who was doing the backing vocals. Fine!! *sighs*
The music was so jumpy and we were so excited that we raised our arms up, trying to get both Neil and Brett’s attention… this was a big mistake, so you know what happened? We forgot to cling on to the railings on front of us! Noreen was pulled roughly to the third row! She was horribly crushed and she was screaming for air!! I kept looking back at Noreen to see whether she was okay. And God it seemed that she wasn’t. She shouted to me to call the bouncer to pull her out. Huh? Pull her out? I thought it was impossible! It was damn hard to call the bouncers, as it was really noisy. I managed to pull one finally, and so one of them pulled Noreen out from the mass. She was like a soaked vegetable! She was the first one to be pulled out! With the music still playing hard, I decided that, ok I wanted out too!! This crowd is terrible!! I got what I wanted. And hey it was a great feeling to be pulled out. When the bouncer carried me up I was on the same level as Brett who was still singing his sweat away!! My hands almost reached him!! We were led to the side of the stage. Noreen was lying on the stretcher catching her breath. I thought our night was a total blow, but hey we did get a good view from the side! A view of the WHOLE band! And it was more relaxing this way as I was not crushed anymore and furthermore we were served with drinks!! More and more people were being pulled from the crowd. Hey and you know what we could actually run up the stage anytime, there was no barrier between us and the stage!! But we thought better of it and just watched. :)
In the middle of the performance, I shifted myself in such a way that I was in Suede’s viewpoint, looking at the fans. I realised that the fans who were in the seating positions were so stiff! What the fuck is this!!! Get your ass up and dance!! This is Suede!! I felt like screaming an Ashcroft-style “COME ON!!!!!!” on the stage!!!
Brett was really doing a good performance and man, I could rate them as one of the Best Live Acts of all time! Brett once swung his microphone to the tune and caught it in time when the song ended. Wow! He also sat on the floor during Saturday Night. Neil once rushed backstage and when he appeared he was skipping towards his keyboards. Was he okay?
I was surprised that the concert ended early. Perhaps they need to rush back to their hotel, which was at Sentosa. Besides, they had to attend an after-show party at Velvet. At the closing moments, Simon threw his drumsticks to the fans, Neil his bottle, Brett his tambourine (it’s a cheap one, actually, as my friend who received it told me later). Neil was the last one to leave and before making his way out, he blew kisses to the fans. I could see satisfaction painted on all the fans’ faces. Woohoo! What a performance.
We rushed back to the backdoor, waiting. This time there were already many fans there.
We were talking when suddenly Simon appeared in one of the windows upstairs, looking down at us! “How are you doing down there?” he shouted. Richard was beside him, crouching and hiding. lol.
Other fans were asking for Brett and Neil and I thought how impolite of them to ask that when it was Simon who was here. Noreen, who was ok now, called to Simon that we will be there at the airport tomorrow to catch them again.
The whole of Suede appeared about 30 minutes later, greeted by camera flashes. Simon lent Charlie Charlton (their tour manager) his video camera to shoot at the fans. Ain’t that cool? And before we knew it, their van were gone.
So, THAT was one night which I believe many Suede fans would agree to have enjoyed themselves very much. It was really beautiful, and the sounds and colours will remain burning in my mind for a long, long time from now.