Less than 24 hours after Crowded House performed their magic at the Entertainment Centre, a little band from the UK called Muse did the same.

I can't begin to say just how much I've been waiting for these guys to play here & it sure was worth waiting for. The doors opened quite late & the sound-check could be heard from outside the venue. I assumed security would check everyone entering using metal detectors etc, like they did for Pearl Jam since all the railing etc had already been setup. Due to the delay with opening the doors, no one was checked, which is unfortunate, since I had left my camera in the car thinking I wouldn't get in with it! To compensate, here are some crappy mobile phone shots! Let me say, the lighting rig for Muse is nothing short of huge & it's used to full effect!



I bought my ticket after waiting for some decent seats to be released & after a couple of weeks of waiting for each allocation of seats to be made available, I gave up on finding the perfect spot & just bought what was left. Since I had row "A" in the balcony for Crowdies, I thought row "GG" for Muse in the same balcony would be a rather crap seat. It turns out row GG is the very first row of the balcony in the VIP allotment! From what I heard, the concert was a sell-out, but from the number of empty seats it certainly wasn't. Someone's got something to answer for in this city as this isn't the first time it's been hard to get tickets & rows of seats end up with no one in them. Hmmm.



Muse play with an amazing intensity & thankfully someone managed to bootleg the show in it's entirety from the audience. A recording is the next best thing & it's been playing on my computer since.

Time for a set list;

Take a bow
Map Of The Problematic
New Born
Butterflies and Hurricanes
(Map Of Your Head mini teaser!!)
Supermassive Black Hole
Citizen Erased
Ruled by secrecy
Feeling Good
Sunburn
Hysteria
Fury
Starlight
The Groove (instrumental)
Time Is Running Out
Stockholm Syndrome
Dead Star/Hyper Music mashup
Plug in Baby
Knights Of Cydonia

The endings to quite a few songs led to jams of other songs. The intro before "Supermassive Black Hole" was a teaser of "Map Of Your Head". The "Dead Star/Hyper Music" actually ended the main set before the encore & the intro to "Knights Of Cydonia" was the little signature tune from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.



Chris head-banged his way through the show & Matt navigated the many cool effects built into his Manson guitars. All the while Dom pounded his clear drum kit in his awesome left-handed manner.

My conclusion to the show... Yes, it was everything I expected & more, but I think I need to see these lads from Britain again & again to get the full amount of what happened on stage into my head. Looks like I'll just have to wait until the new year when the DVD from their Wembley shows is released.