Black Eyed Peas Featuring Click Five
Singapore may not exactly be on the world tour circuit for many bands, but every now and then a ‘big name’ will visit during a rapid race through Asia. Cliff Richard & Westlife were, non-ironically, attended by Jane before we got here and we went to see Christina in June.
This time it was turn of the Black Eyed Peas to grace Singapore’s National Stadium, which is like a slightly cleaner smaller version of Wembley Arena. The BEP audience was broadly similar to that of Christina; a mixture of gay men, teenage girls and boys and their parents and smattering of expats.
Unlike the previous gig, where Christina started belting songs straight away at eight, the Black Eyed Peas had a support act, a kind of take-themselves-seriously American McFly), The Click Five. The band, who were entirely new to me, were a walking cliché; skinny legs in skinnier jeans; feathered Aerosmith hair; rock posturing and a keyboard player trying desperately to stand out (wacky shades, tie, outlandish clapping) despite playing the least cool instrument.
The band were purveyors of the same sort of magpie-pop-rock as McFly, as they progressed through their oeuvre I found myself identifying each of the songs as the Coldplay one, the 80s movie one, the Busted one, the Fall Out Boy one… They were harmless enough for four numbers but after nearly an hour they’d outstayed their welcome past our initial amusement at their slightly soulless cod-rock posturing.
The ‘kids’ seemed to like it though, there is hardly a less responsive audience in the world than in Singapore. Every ‘Make some noise, Singapore’ is greeted with an obedient wall of screaming. Apparently the band are pretty big in the Philippines. Jo however was not impressed.
The Main Event
The Black Eyed Peas took to the stage, break-dancing and strutting about the stage belting through a couple of hits, including the ‘supreme’ ode to the female form, My Humps. Up until now I had not realised that this was a poem about female empowerment, rather than a load of old tosh.
One of the members, apl.de.ap performed an ode to being a Filipino. This was done because Singapore is close to his homeland and there is reasonably sized population here in Singapore (and clearly in the audience judging by the response). However one has to wonder that perhaps their tour might have included a stop in Manilla? Particularly as their support band managed three stops there!
However the performance began to sag. Initially via a curious masturbatory guitar version of Sweet Child of Mine with Fergie on vocals and then into the plugging of the various solo material of the individual Peas. Will.i.am launched into a My Humps redux which he claimed was number one somewhere and the ultimate bobfoc Fergie managed to squeeze four hits out of an album with only half a decent song. There was even a forgettable number for the whole troupe, which even they didn’t seem that interested in performing.
However the encore was a triumph, despite a long break where the Singaporean crowd (no great lover or understand-er of the encore process) nearly stopped ‘making noise’. Where is the Love? is the group’s standout record, instilling an almost religious atmosphere, with the lights down and mobile phones standing in for modern day lighters in the dark. A long way from the saggy solo material.
It’s curious to me that despite breaking the group with a memorable ‘message’ song, that there has been nothing but party tunes (some good, some shocking) ever since.
We managed to avoid the end of show scrum for transport, by edging toward the door as the group said their thank yous, ‘bigged up’ their dancers and no doubt invited everyone to an after party. We had to pay through the nose (relatively for Singapore) but it’s worth it to be home in ten minutes rather than to board the tube with thousands of other people at Wembley Central and then stand for an hour.
The group are clearly a case of being more than the sum of their parts. I cannot summarise any more eloquently than Jo. “If I’d have wanted to see her ‘strumpet about’ in her tiny skirts I’d have paid to see her solo concert, why didn’t they play more of their good stuff?”
Andy 23 October 2007
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