14/05/14 - A Blast from the Past with McBUSTED

If you're in the UK or have access to the Internet at all, you're probably aware of the phenomenon which is McBusted.  My Facebook feed has been full of people posting overexcited selfies wearing their tour T-shirts and raving about how amazing they are.  For anyone who was somehow missed out on this, McBusted are an amalgamation of the entirety of the band McFly and two thirds of the band Busted.  They're billed as the 'ultimate supergroup' and certainly the following that this hybrid has gained is incredibly impressive.

And although I've been trying to write dispassionately rather than outright raving from the start of this post, I can't deny that when I saw them perform on the televised Children In Need event last year I immediately went online and booked tickets.  Like, immediately.  Any long time readers of this blog may have noticed that I'm not really one for going to concerts - or should that be 'gigs'?  Which is the cooler one to say?  This shows how little I go to them.  I tend to favour the theatre over live music as a good 70% of my iPod consists of musical theatre soundtracks.  However, there are a select few that I make an exception for and this was always going to be one of them.

When I was a mere eleven-year-old whippersnapper, Busted were my absolute favourite band.  It would never have occurred to little Hannah that seeing them live was an option, and then they split up.  My chance was gone...or so I thought.  As soon as this tour was announced, I knew that I owed it to the little girl inside me to go.  I was never a huge McFly fan - not as much as I was a Busted fan anyway - but I own their first album and like a lot of their music.

Clearly more into the Busted than the Mc...

Unfortunately my photos of the evening are few and far between.  I brought along my camera but it turns out that if you buy a packet of 16 batteries from Poundland, there's a very slim chance of them actually working...so I was left with my phone camera which turned out to be a little less helpful than I'd hoped.  Despite that, I documented the evening the best that I could with the limited means available to me.

The whole experience was more magical than I could possibly have imagined.  All six are utter showmen and the entire performance had a non-stop level of energy that would have damn near killed me.  Just watching them sprint and leap around the stage was a little tiring, let alone factoring in the singing and instrument-playing they did at the same time.  It was clear that they were all just utterly loving what they were doing and the crowd couldn't help but be totally swept along with their enthusiasm.  If I had to describe the performance in a single word, I would undoubtedly choose 'fun'.  It seems simplistic and probably not strong enough to convey my true feelings but from the second they they exploded onto the stage, every single person in that arena was just having fun.  The staging was extraordinary, with quite a few impressive surprises.  It turns out I know the lyrics to every single song on the setlist which I was unreasonably proud of.  While I will admit that the show was probably a little heavier on the Busted than McFly (which is fine by me), there was a great mixture of songs including some covers which resulted in a fabulously varied show.  

Shockingly, the song that brought me the closest to being overwhelmed by nostalgia (and for 'nostalgia', also read 'emotion') was What I Go To School For.  Admittedly it's not exactly your typical tearjerker, but watching it performed live took me right back to being a slightly chubby child, endlessly watching the music channels in the hopes of catching the video - these were the days before on-demand television and YouTube - and doing those infamous Busted jumps around the living room.  After a decade of waiting, it just seemed a little too good to be true that I was actually seeing the song performed live.

I screamed and sang myself hoarse, even to the point where I got a little lightheaded at one point...but that wasn't going to stop me dancing and jumping until my legs ached.  It was also totally worth the dreadful cold I seem to have developed in the midst of all the excitement.  My evening wasn't even dampened by having a few issues getting home which led to me spending forty minutes sat in a 24-hour McDonalds, drafting this blog post on a napkin.  

Definitely how the pros do it.

I enjoyed the evening so much that I was this close to buying a ticket for their final performance in Liverpool two nights later.  However, I couldn't really afford it and as I mentioned earlier, I'm now suffering after enjoying myself so much.  If it had been feasible, I definitely would have gone again...once really doesn't feel like enough.  I've got my fingers firmly crossed for another tour or an album or just something to continue on this beautiful combination of musicians.

Are you one of the many people who saw McBusted?  Did you love it?  Let me know in the comments!