It's Frankmusik doing Amelie's Baby Jake dance!


I know what you're thinking. You're thinking "Phil, where can I get a pair of trousers like that?". And the answer is, you can't. It's actually a jumper on upside down.

But dress sense aside, I have to say that I loved Frankmusik last night. He was well worth the two-and-a-half year wait. To be frank, his musik wasn't everyone's cup of tea though. When asked for her opinion, the person sitting on my right (who just happened to be Lisa) stated that she "couldn't see the point really". I must admit, he did have a habit of performing remixes of other people's songs, rather than just his own material, which Lisa felt was a bit pointless, but personally I found it all quite inventive. At one point he sang an entirely new melody over the backing track from 'Sweet Dreams' by the Eurythmics, which I thought was pretty cool.

But to be honest, he had no need to rely on other people's creations, because he's quite capable of writing a few catchy tunes of his own. I defy anyone to visit his MySpace page, listen to the song 'No ID', and not be tapping along by the end. I, for one, will definitely be buying his album. He announced at the start of his set that he's just been dropped by his record label, so I should be able to get it pretty cheap.

Frankmusik may have been a pleasant surprise, but to be honest, the biggest shock of the night came when he left the stage, the lights went up, and the person sitting immediately in front of me turned around and said hello. There were two thousand people there last night, and I'd managed to get tickets directly behind my old boss. So while we waited for Erasure to take the stage, I spent an enjoyable twenty minutes reminiscing with her about life at the hospital pharmacy, what everyone's up to now, and how we're both well out of it. She left a year after I did. Which I'm sure is no coincidence.

Interestingly, I chatted away for twenty minutes before remembering that I had a ridiculous moustache. She'd said nothing, so she clearly assumed I'd lost all sense of style and self-respect in the past two years and considered it to be a good look. When I realised, I was forced to tap her on the shoulder and insist that I was growing it for charity. I don't think she believed me. I was so embarrassed, I had to hide in the toilets for ten minutes until Erasure came on.

But it was worth the wait. Erasure might have got together before Frankmusik was even born (God, I feel old), but they can still belt out a good tune...


I think Andy Bell got a gym membership for Christmas. I haven't seen anyone so ripped since Amelie tore up a photo of Lisa. He spent the evening rippling across the stage like a set of snooker balls in a sausage skin. At one point, Vince had to cut him free from his corset with a pair of scissors, just so he could show off his six-pack.

To be honest, I think the role of Vince Clarke at an Erasure concert could pretty much be played by a mannequin in a jacket. He spent 90% of the show standing behind a winged gargoyle doing precisely nothing. I'm not even convinced there was anything back there. I think they gave the creature wings just to hide the fact that Vince doesn't have a keyboard. He strummed a guitar for three songs, and played the first three notes of 'Oh L'amour' on a Stylophone, but other than that, I think he was just texting on his iPhone...


It didn't matter though, because the music was great. The crowd were pretty wild for a group of forty-somethings, but as luck would have it, my old boss and her husband are even more reserved than me and Lisa, so we weren't quite the last ones to get up and dance.

All in all, it was a great concert, and we had a really good time. But as anyone who's been following this stuff for the past eight years will know, I can't mention Vince Clarke on this blog without half my family turning up to reminisce about the times he used to play his guitar in our living room. So Mum, it's over to you...