I probably shouldn't have gone poking around for some online reviews prior to attending tonight but as the doors were changed to 18:30 at the last minute and Emilie Autumn due to hit the stage at an uncharacteristically early 19:30 I wanted to find out how long she was on stage for. What I discovered as a worrying thing as a few people had reported that there was a lot of miming going on. Anyhoo, armed with this news I met up with Toni at North Greenwich and we headed off to the O2 Academy to see what lay in store.
We got to Angel to find the queue going round the block so we shuffled along in line until we made it to the venue. Our first observation once we were inside was that the majority of the audience was made up of 12-15 year olds. This became even more apparent as Emilie Autumn hit the stage and rather than the usual shouts and cheers we were subjected to a barrage of high pitched screams and squeals!
Things started well with a very dramatic entrance and then things all went a little queer as Toni spotted straight away that Emilie was miming. I looked closer and sadly it was true, or at least partly. Bits were live and bits were mimed which made for a most confusing performance. When Emilie started playing the keyboard her hands were in the wrong place for the notes being played which brought the integrity of her "live" performance further into doubt. The violin playing was also questionable!
There were some funny skits between songs but as things went on these seemed to get longer and longer and suddenly it was more like pantomime rather than a gig. The jokes just seemed to be thrashed out far too long and you can only take so much "British Carry On" style humour for so long! The under 16 audience lapped it up but sadly we didn't and the pseudo-sexual lesbian antics become very wearing after a while.
The outfits were visually stunning and all the girls looked fabulous it was just a shame that the show did not live up to expectations. I wanted to see live performances and not miming. The skits would probably have been fine if it hadn't been for the distraction of miming during the song and musical elements. There was a joke at one point when Emilie said, "That's the trouble with these Britney mics, you never know when they are on." The trouble was that we did!
Sorry Emilie Autumn but you picked up a BIG FAIL tonight and we left one hour into the performance as we just couldn't take it anymore. I guess we were spoiled on Tuesday with a great gig courtesy of The 69 Eyes where everything was live so to see what I can only term total disrespect for the audience was just not tolerable.
On the plus side, I do still love Emilie's record work and that hasn't stopped me liking her but I would definitely be very cautious about seeing her live again unless it was as part of festival or supporting someone else.
I did get some good photos though so it wasn't all bad.
See all the EMILIE AUTUMN pics here: 120310EmilieAutumnO2Academy
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