Last Night, after having good times with the rest of my Birmingham bound comrades, we took in a show at the NIA, with Mrs Amy Winehouse. Now of course we all know about recent history and the fact that her husband is currently locked up for trying to pervert the course of justice, to what ends we don’t know. Of course all the talk was about whether or not she would turn up at all let alone perform any of her modern day classic songs.

According to one radio station at least, the support act lead singer had learned all her songs so she could perform them if required, which being honest, is not the best thing to be hearing before you make your way to a concert. But that doesn’t even come close to paling in comparison to the horrors that we beheld.

In hind sight, maybe the support girl should have performed. Instead of an entertaining evening singing along to the likes of “Back to Black” and “Love Is A Losing Game” and just being glad that for once we were indoors to enjoy such a talent, we had an entertaining evening of seeing how bad a human being can make a complete arse of themselves of stage. And I am being kind in that regard.

For starters, the main act herself was extremely late on stage after the support act went off by about an hour (it was less, but standing there in the arena, it seemed longer) and then when she did come on, oh dear. She seemed to excessively rub her nose (no mystery there) and then try and drink an imaginary drink, then she actually got hold of one, and then another and another all through the opening few minutes of the act.

Where was she? The Sahara Desert?

Clearly she wasn’t on the stage, as she meandered through one song to another, slurring words and half the songs, you couldn’t even start to make out what the words were. I can’t simply describe what it sounded like, no words could come close, the closest I can think of was someone being strangled through parts, and then someone dying in others.

And it only got worse, she was obsessed with trying to wear a white guitar from the back of the stage, but not even playing it, at one point, one of the stage hands had to come to her rescue to relieve her of the instrument, only for her to wear it once more.

It was when she started crying for her husband and speaking about him that you basically knew she was clearly not up for this. Let alone the drunken behaviour (mixed with a cocaine cocktail I have no doubt), she just wanted to go, and for a while she did, and the band tried to carry on, introducing themselves and doing the best to win the crowd back.

It failed like Hitler’s Germany.

Slowly but surely the boos started, and they were getting louder with each passing song. And then we see ugly. “Who’s that booing” she rasped down the mic, and this was mixed in with cheering from the devoted who don’t want to see Amy smeared.

To paraphrase her next sentence: “Those who are cheering are brilliant and all those who are booing are (fudging) (dunce)!” and apparently when her husband gets out, we are all in for it, don’t see how, but we’ll get our comeuppance. Wonder if he will do a door to door campaign….

And then the boos got louder and the crowd was starting to vote with their feet. The only other time I have seen lots of people leave was at Glastonbury with the legend that are The Who, and I think that was only because people wanted to go home after a long few days of dancing, drinking and whatever else took their fancy. This was because it was bad.

I feel sorry for the band, I really do. They were the picture of professionalism and carried on regardless, the two men dancing on the right hand side of the stage still giving their all, and they deserve nothing but applause in my blog.

But as for the “lady” of the hour, it was pathetic and that is truly sad. Her voice is nothing short of fantastic from her albums, her performance from Glastonbury earlier this year, of which I invite you all to re watch the video made then to remind you how great she was. She has a great talent and to see it being “pi**ed” down the drain like this is nothing short of tragic.

It appears now she has forgotten how to perform, and we have all seen examples of singers in rock bands with turbulent personal lives and drug problems, still managing to go on that stage and truly shine. But here was someone struggling for well, just being able to stand first off. If things are that bad, and she truly is in no condition to sing, she should have never gone on that stage and instead done the decent thing and cancelled or rescheduled the tour.

At the end of the day this is the simple truth. People paid good money to see a performance and didn’t get one. Or rather got a performance of a different sort.

Now in the press, it is wave after wave of comments from fans from the show who only goes on to say how bad things went. I had plenty of comments on the way home for instance, two lads said that she was far worse at the Carling Academy in Birmingham earlier this year, and she even said to the audience then “You may as well ask for your money back!”. Another wanted to go halfway through the show, another went after 3 songs. We even started having bets over whether or not she would last over half an hour….

Just look at these pages if you need more proof:
EntertainmentWise
Gigwise
Times Online

The Times article is the most kind of the ones that people have shown me so far, instead referring to her past performances and the songs she has created rather than focusing on what went on.

But for now my final thought: She needs help, family, friends, someone on the tour or at the record label needs to get her that help otherwise we’ll have another Kurt on our hands. And that will be something to go to rehab over.