Birmingham and Marina & the Diamonds concert

On Saturday (23rd Oct) me and mum spent the afternoon in Birmingham before seeing Marina & the Diamonds in concert that evening. In the morning we got prepared to go out and mum painted my nails for me.


We set off just after lunch and the drive to Birmingham went smoothly. We got parked and then walked into the city. On our way we spotted 3 or 4 upside down signs!


We walked to the Bullring and had a little wander round there before stopping for drinks in a cafe. While we were there the pendant bit fell off my necklace but luckily I was sitting down so caught it and mum helped me put it back on. I didn't have much luck with my jewellery - a matching necklace and earring set - on Sat. As well as my necklace coming apart, when I took if off at home I discovered the chain was knotted (I have no idea how that happened, maybe it was like that when I bought it), which took dad quite a while to un-knot. And one of my earrings must have fallen out while I was out because when I came to take them out I only had one in!

Then we wandered round an outdoor and indoor market. We both found the markets very interesting because they was so multicultural. I took lots of photos so here are a selection.

These suits said on them from age 1 upwards!

Mum bought a piece of purple material which she wore as a scarf that day and is now planning to use to make a knitting bag.



After that we spent a while in warm Waterstones - mum looked at knitting books and I surfed the Internet from my iPhone on one of their comfy seats :) Then we wandered towards the venue, stopping at a cafe in the train station to eat our packed sandwiches.

We got to the Town Hall quite early. We heard that the support act was called CocknBullKid and were each given a free wristband which would let us have a free download of a CocknBullKid song. We were given Marina & the Diamonds stickers and had a photo taken holding those which I think might be put up on her website or Facebook page at somepoint. There was a stall selling various Marina & the Diamonds merchandise so I bought myself a hoody. Sorry this picture isn't very good quality, it was taken on my iPhone so I could put it up on Facebook then.


Me and mum just sat and relaxed til the doors opened at 7.30pm. We saw this schedule so knew roughly what time everything would be happening.


We found our seats, which were in the middle of the front row of the circle so we had a great view. I tried to take some photos but my camera didn't work very well at that distance in the funny lighting and my iPhone camera isn't very good and has no zoom. I got photos 2 which show the set up quite well. The first was taken on my iPhone, so with no zoom. And the second was taken on my compact camera to try to show the set better.


The venue slowly filled up but I was surprised that there were a few empty seats in the circle. Apparently they'd sold out so it looked like some people hadn't been able to make it. Downstairs was standing only. I saw a very little girl who only looked about 7 in amongst all the people standing downstairs. She was wearing ear defenders for the noise. Personally I think she was a bit young to be at a standing concert. I was seated next to an odd man who was there on his own. I think he may have had OCD as he kept using alcohol hand gel to clean his hands. Next to mum were 2 very drunk women who were very noisy and made the whole row of seats shake with their dancing! Luckily they calmed down a bit after a gay couple sitting the other side of them told them off and then they left. It was quite chilly in the circle to start with but once the doors were closed I got a bit warmer.

Here is mum trying to learn some of the lyrics before Marina came on.


The support act was on from 8pm til 8.30pm. She was called CocknBullKid and was very good, definitely one of the better support acts we've seen. The sound balance wasn't quite right and the music drowned her out at points, which was a shame. If you're interested you can find out more about CocknBullKid and listen to some of her music on her MySpace page here. And you can get a free download of a good song called CocknBullKid here.

After CocknBullKid there was a short break while they set the stage up for Marina & the Diamonds. She was on from 9pm til about 10.15pm.

Marina performed 16 songs in total - all 13 songs from her album The Family Jewels, an iTunes exclusive track called The Family Jewels, Seventeen and a new song called Jealousy. She opened with The Family Jewels which worked really well. All the songs were great but the atmosphere was brilliant with Oh No! because everyone knew it and was singing along, me included. I sang along to all the songs (apart from Jealousy of course because I didn't know it) and had nearly lost my voice by the end! You could tell that the audience was singing along when Marina changed the timings of some songs and caught the audience out! The songs weren't performed hugely differently to the way they sound on the album but there was more emotion in them and they were more performed than just sung, if that makes sense. There were spotlights dancing around the walls for Jealousy. And she sang Happy Birthday to someone in the audience.

The set was very simple but it worked very well because Marina was such a strong performer that she didn't need lots of props to support her performance. Her voice was fantastic, despite her having a chest infection. There was only one song (towards the end) that her voice didn't sound perfect on. The screen on the backdrop was used effectively throughout the concert. Before Marina came on a short film was shown on the screen at the back and after that it was used a few times between songs and a few times for videos or animations to accompany songs.

Marina was very friendly and chatty to the audience between songs. She needs her fans help to beat Enrique in the Europe category of the MTV EMA music awards. And she made a lovely thank you speech to her fans, which was genuine but not cheesy.

Marina wore 4 different costumes throughout the concert. She started off wearing a plain black long dress with a yellow pompom round her neck. Although she changed outfits throughout the performance, the yellow pompom remained throughout. And she had a blonde streak in her hair. She wore an amazing feathery hat for Mowgli's Road, performed Hermit the Frog with 4 red balloons tied to each wrist and held some pink plastic hearts for another song. Marina wore a couple of different pairs of heels (including some plain black ones and some with yellow blocks around the heels) but took them off for some songs so she could jump around. And of course she wore a few different pairs of sunglasses. Most songs were performed standing at the microphone with some dancing around but she performed Obsessions and Numb sat at the keyboard. Her second outfit was a short dress. It was mainly pink and white check but had silvery snake skin like patches. Her third outfit was blue and white striped and glittery and looked like a pair of pyjamas. She only wore that for Numb sitting at the piano. Her final outfit was just used for the finale of Hollywood. She went off before that and it looked like she'd finished, but I knew she'd have to come back as she'd not performed her big hit Hollywood yet. That outfit consisted of a pair of Stars and Stripes trousers (one leg was the stars and one leg was the stripes) and a yellow cheerleader jacket. Marina also held a plastic hamburger for the start of Hollywood.

Afterwards I persuaded mum to let me go round to the stage door to see if could meet Marina as I'd heard she might be coming out after the show to meet her fans. We'd only been waiting a few minutes when someone told us it might be up to an hour til she came out. I really wanted to wait but mum wouldn't let me wait as she was very tired and still needed to do the hour and a half drive home. I understand that but was very disappointed as I'd love to meet Marina. So we walked back to the car and then drove home. We got a bit lost on the way back due to the SatNav not getting signal quickly enough when we set off, but it soon got us back on track.

I've found a good set of photos from the concert posted on Marina's Facebook page, which you can see here. I've been having a look for Youtube videos from that night and most are very poor quality. However if you're interested you can see Jealousy here.