When is a Prom not a Prom? When it was yesterday's shambolic, Proms-free "Proms in the Park" concert, it seems.
We've been avid regular attendees of this most British of British celebrations for many years now, and know it for what it traditionally was - the "overspill" party to celebrate the closing session of Sir Henry Wood's great gift to music; the culmination of eight weeks-worth of overwhelmingly professional, first-class concerts embracing the old, the new, the mainstream and the oddball genres that comprise the rich tapestry of music worldwide. We look forward to it.
We are more than well aware that the remit of Proms in the Park was never just to serve as a "live feed" from the Royal Albert Hall, and that over the years it has developed into a festival of (largely) middle-of-the-road musical talent, yet nonetheless serving as a build-up to a live link with the traditional Last Night sequence of Rule, Britannia, the conductor's speech and "three cheers" for Sir Henry, followed by the sing-along combo of Land of Hope and Glory, Jerusalem and the national anthem. Live links were always a big feature throughout the day, embracing not just the goings-on in the Hall, but also the sister celebrations in Glasgow, Belfast and Colwyn Bay - often with a single session that united them all. Not this year.
Yesterday, there were no - and I repeat, NO - live links to anywhere except to Zoe Ball in a Radio 2 studio, and endless footage of our host Michael Ball waddling around back-stage asking pointless and stupid questions of the crew and assorted backstage types. A very dull substitute, indeed.
We're used to the celebrations opening in the afternoon with the utterly inane Tony Blackburn, but this year he wasn't even given any acts to introduce, just some records. So he was even more irritating than ever. He managed to get us doing YMCA, and there was even a mass conga-line (which, sadly, due to some technical reason to do with Michael Ball's later appearance, which we assume needed to be filmed in advance, was cut off halfway through). But it wasn't really joined-up enough to feel like previous "afternoon segments", with their line-up of cheesy tribute bands and the like.
You can hang out with all the boys
We did have a rather forgettable little session from "Fleetwood Mac impersonators" The Wandering Hearts, then Michael Ball arrived and got the job of "filling in the gaps" for the rest of the day - with an increasing sense of panic and frustration, we thought - and there were indeed frequent and, frankly, shameful gaps to fill between every single performance! The overall feel of the day was distinctly amateur, ill-prepared, and - despite the hike in prices to almost £50 a head, which with a 40,000 capacity audience must bring in quite a hefty fee - "done on the cheap". Why else would the BBC gnomes have thought it better to drag members of the audience up on stage for embarrassing and pointless "chit-chats" with Mr Ball and Mr Blackburn instead of relaying some decent Proms music from the Hall? Why was there so much time and effort bestowed upon the so-called Rock Choir (itself made up of a horde of amateurs, who, it seems, will do anything for free as long as they get on the telly)?
Their "flash-mob" - whereby thousands of members of the audience (mainly sturdy middle-aged Mumsnet types) stripped off their cagoules and fleeces to reveal their lavishly-produced "I'm a member of the Rock Choir" T-shirts - was, to be quite honest, a bit sinister rather than fun. Considering the fact that this is meant to be an enjoyable day's professional entertainment, their en masse efforts at "singing" numbers by Martha and the Vandellas, Eurythmics, ELO and Queen a) went on far too long, and b) were basically a very big karaoke. And if I have to sit through another fucking version of miserabilist Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah ever again, I swear I shall scream! It all reminded us of an evangelical church congregation, only less tuneful. Or perhaps a re-enaction of the Munich Rallies... Dreadful.
Another pointless gap.
Our next act, the estimable singer-songwriter [mainly the latter: his catalogue includes When You Tell Me That You Love Me (for Miss Ross), Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now (Starship), I Don't Wanna Lose You (Tina Turner), Little Arrows (Leapy Lee), To All the Girls I've Loved Before (Julio Iglesias) and - ahem - Gimme Dat Ding (Pipkins)] Albert Hammond was brought on just to do two of his instantly-recognisable numbers, which he did very well, It Never Rains in Southern California [unfortunately it did, on and off all day, in Hyde Park] and The Air That I Breathe. He could have had a bit longer, but no.
Another long gap ensued, as the stage was set for the cast of West End hit Bat Out of Hell to perform. They were very good, as long as you enjoy the back-catalogue of Meatloaf. Which is fine for a good old sing-a-long, of course. Oh, and the singer stripped off his top, so that was rather diverting.
Another gap. More infill. Then Mr Ball himself performed - unfortunately he chose to do the overblown This Is Me from the hit soundtrack to Greatest Showman, but redeemed himself with You Can't Stop The Beat from Hairspray - the musical [he was "Edna Turnblad" in the West End version, after all].
Another awkward gap. It rained.
Miss Lisa Stansfield is, quite rightly, a "national treasure". Her soulful voice is a joy, and everyone in the 40,000-strong crowd could sing along with her hits, notably Around the World and The Real Thing. She was sassy, effervescent, and bloody great entertainment. So why was her microphone set so low that she struggled to out-shine her backing band? We danced and sang along with gusto, nonetheless.
Then, more random back-stage waffle.
We had such high hopes for Mr Matt Goss's session. His Vegas Big Band numbers are classy, and the BBC Big Band was indeed assembled on the Hyde Park stage with him. Bafflingly, he chose not to do anything resembling Big Band arrangements last night - instead we got variations-on-a-theme of his back-catalogue as one half of Bros (which we expected), but done in a variety of styles including reggae(!) and guitar-rock. The band played manfully behind all this, but might as well not have bothered - for we in the audience couldn't hear them. [Thankfully they had their own chance to shine later on in the show, with polished versions of Sing, Sing, Sing, the Rocky theme, Opus One and One O'Clock Jump - which just served to show up why Mr Goss missed an opportunity, really.] It was disappointing, to say the least.
After another gap, it was the sublime tenor Joseph Calleja's turn to take the stage - the first classical performance of the evening; and he was treated most irreverently, we thought. Not only was his microphone (like Miss Stansfield's) too quiet, but we felt he had been unceremoniously "dumped" into a slot between Mr Goss (who has a large fanbase) and the build-up to Mr Josh Groban (ditto), with the consequence that our already-quite-tipsy audience treated this as another "interlude" and an excuse to troll off to the loo or just chat among themselves. We thought his renditions of Questo O Quella (from Rigoletto), E Lucevan Le Stelle (from Tosca) and La Donna è Mobile (from Rigoletto) were wonderful!
Next up, the "wunderkind" Miss Jess Gillam. Just 20 years old, the saxophonist and BBC Young Musician of the Year finalist not only performed for us in the park (Michael Nyman's If (from The Diary Of Anne Frank) but then legged it across the other side of the park to the Hall to perform again:
She's good!
Following the BBC Big Band's own section (as mentioned earlier), which was immensely enjoyable, it was time for... another achingly unnecessary segment of blather.
Then came Mr Josh Groban. He's a man with a remarkably beautiful voice, and he's (quite rightly) hugely popular in the UK as well as his native USA. Unfortunately, just as we were in the mood for a bit of a bop, his repertoire was, well, depressing, really - Granted, River, Bridge Over Troubled Water, Over The Rainbow and You Raise Me Up; all of them nice enough (with the exception of the latter, which I loathe), but by the end of it we were prepared to open a vein. Had his slot been swapped with Miss Stansfield's, we would have been happier.
Another pointless gap followed - the very worst of the whole night, as we were "treated" to some audio (yes! audio!) by the organisers (and I use that term loosely; these are the people who are supposed to make the event run smoothly - which it didn't - and the same people who charge £10 for an A5 programme and £3 for a tiny Union Jack, while tolerating £25-a-bottle-of-wine prices at the bar, and anarchy at the loos - with women invading the Gents all evening - and who turned a blind eye to a horde of heavily funded pro-EU "protestors" handing out (free) bloody EU flags at the door) telling us all about how the toilets were plumbed in, the number of security fences, the make and model of the cameras, blah-de-blah-de-fucking-blah. For twenty minutes. At 9pm at a live concert/festival? Give us a handout, for fuck's sake! At least we could have binned that and moved on...
Thank heavens for Miss Gladys Knight! Just as we were on the cusp of plucking our own eyeballs out at the banal drivel blurting from the speakers, on she (finally) came. A megastar in every sense of the word - even at 74 years of age, this living legend could blow the likes of Beyoncé, Mariah, Mary J. Blige et al out of the water.
What a performer! She has lost none of the remarkable vocal dexterity for which we adore her so, and did a full-force set that many a younger performer would balk at. All her biggest and most beloved numbers were here: You're The Best Thing, Baby Don't Change Your Mind, Heard It Through The Grapevine, Licence To Kill, Just My Imagination, The Way We Were, Neither One Of Us and Midnight Train to Georgia among them. And she sang them all beautifully. We were in awe. She brought some of us to tears, and also provided us with an opportunity to get up and boogie, in one fell swoop...
Then came the biggest single crime of all. For the first time ever, we did not go over to the Royal Albert Hall. No popular songs from World War I (which, apparently, other Proms in the Park concerts in the regions did get!). No speech from the fabulous Sir Andrew Davis. No "three cheers" to the Proms founder Sir Henry Wood. No Gerald Finley; no camera-panning shots of the Promenaders with their silly hats and assorted "amusing" inflatables. We had the BBC Concert Orchestra, and that bloody Rock Choir again.
We had the Sea Songs (complete with bobbing). We had an excellent tenor (credited in neither the programme nor on the website, more's the pity) to lead Rule, Britannia - and he manfully carried on even when the fuckwits behind the scenes forgot to switch his microphone on for the first verse; he deserved better. We (of course) had the crowd-pleasing Land of Hope and Glory and Jerusalem, and the national anthem, and the Auld Lang Syne - and fireworks, too! What we didn't have was any sense that this was related to the actual Last Night of the Proms; that this was in any way the event it always used to be - a celebration thereof.
All-in-all, the day was a bit "flat" and on many occasions downright boring, which is unforgivable for any party! Furthermore, without any connection to the Proms season other than the tunes, this could well have been any "Party in the Park" in any provincial town, at any time of the year.
Unless they change it back to what it was, I doubt in future we'll be parting with almost £50 per head for that.
Such a shame.
