My Live 8 London Review Part 1

[madformac]

Hey all,

OK,

After getting my first nights sleep last night since Thursday I'm refreshed and ready to give my account of Live 8, Hyde Park, London. 2nd July 2005.

It all started back last month when the ticket lottery was announced and if you participated you were entered for the lottery by texting the correct answer to a question. I texted hoping to win but didn't expect much. Anyway, 2 weeks before the event, at the last possible moment Pink Floyd announced they were reforming for this event only. Needless to say I was speechless. When I recovered I called Seteca and we decided to go literally mad texting! But it paid off and we were one of the winners.

Next stop Manchester, UK, 30th June 2005. Seteca came up to watch Oasis in concert in their hometown. It was a really great gig, Liam was on top form and Zak Starkey, still a member of The Who, was on drums once more. After the gig we jammed on guitar until 5am, got a couple of hours sleep and then set off back to London on Friday..

We arrived at Euston Station at 4:08pm and headed straight to Hyde Park, luggage in hand to check out the queues, as it turned out the only people there were about 6 tents and you could tell they were full of Pink Floyd fans!. We could hear the drums thumping as we got to the entrance and it was U2 soundchecking. We stayed to listen to them from the concert gates and then McCartney came on and ran through a few tunes too. The sound was very good considering we were about a mile away from the stage!

We dropped the bags off and went out for a bit of dinner in Leicester Square and then out with Seteca's friends. At one point we drove through Abbey Road and across the famous zebra crossing made famous by The Beatles. I thought of McCartney and the day ahead. It was now 4:20am and we got about an hour's rest before heading out at 5:30am for the gig.

Hyde Park was only about 2 minutes walk from us but there was only one entrance for the gig, about 2km around the perimeter so we set off. Once inside we had to walk back again but inside the park so it was about 4km in total just to the gates. You just knew later in the morning people would be queuing all the way.. There were 4 gates in the sdtandard ticket area and in our gate there were about 30 or so people in front of us so I would say we were in the first 200 in the queue. It was 6am and we settled in.....

At about 9am Dido went through a quick soundcheck followed again by U2 and Macca. It seemed they really wanted to get it right and stayed for quie a while.

At 12pm the gates opened and a scene of lunatic proportions started. We ran across the park, probably about 1200m or so to the barriers. We took up position right in the middle and 1 row back from the front of the stanard section which was about 100m from the stage, behind the gold area..

We stood there for another 2 hours, making it 8 hours standing up in total to this point and then at 2pm McCartney and Bono hit the stage with their version of Sgt Peppers. It had begun.


Boring stuff out of the way now,

Part 2 coming soon.. Stay tuned..

[gldstwmn]

Thank you. I can't wait to hear more.

[wondergirl9847]

Can't wait to read Part Deux!