So yesterday was London Pride and well, it was one hell of a rainy day! We had planned on spending most of the afternoon at the Pride mainstage to see Darren Hayes, Unklejam and Dragonette perform. But as fate would have it, the rain started coming down and we decided that we’d brave it for Darren Hayes but we’d have to duck and cover after that. After all, we did spend 30 minutes on our hair and for anyone that knows EQ knows that’s way too long…and the hair did fall flat in the rain…LOL.
Darren Hayes was his usual brilliant self and it was really nice to see him outside of his shows as people kept asking me ‘Who is this guy? He’s brilliant!’ It was just really cool to see the general public get into his music, along with the hardcore fans in the front showing their usual amount of overwhelming support. Fans from all over Italy and The Netherlands braved the terrorist plots and the crazy airports to see Darren perform ‘I Want You’, ‘On The Verge Of Something Wonderful’, ‘Me, Myself and (I) and his mashup of Prince’s ‘Baby I’m A Star/Pop!ular’ with his usual blend of energy and enthusiasm while be-bopping around onstage in his white pimp suit. What was most hilarious was that the guy doing sign-language for the crowd definitley could not keep up with Darren’s fast-moving lyrics! He kinda just gave up after awhile and just did the best job he could. Bless.
Someone took this rather ok video of the show…
After that, we decided it was time to eat and we tucked into a pizza at La Bruschetta (which I might recommend as I think it’s the best Italian restaurant in London) with our mates Richard & Adam and we even found Clare amongst the madness of Old Compton Street which was lined with drag queens and boys in their underwear and umbrellas prancing about on London’s special gay day. However with 5 peeps and 3 umbrellas, we decided to duck into one of EQ’s favourite bars – The Friendly Society for a few gin/lemonaides. We had a nice little chat with bar owner Maria before everyone else got the same idea and crowded us out of the bar, so we then ended up waiting in the queue at Soho Revue Bar for Darren’s final performance of Club Delicacy after walking around for a bit. In the queue were ‘the usual suspects’ and it seemed every Darren Hayes super fan was there. It was a family reunion of sorts for all of us who’ve been supporting Darren on his Club Delicacy mini-tour. We even finally got to meet Brad from Big Machine Media who asked us if we were ‘the world famous Electroqueer’…awww that like totally made our day!
The final night of Club Delicacy was amazing. Temposhark played a hot DJ set which included Madonna’s ‘Runaway Lover’ and Robyn’s ‘Konicheewa Bitches’ and Darren mixed the show up a bit and opened with ‘Bombs Up In My Face’ which seemed appropriate being that we had some bomb scares that day in London. He then even treated the London crowd to his latin-themed version of ‘Insatiable’ that he had only sang in the US along with the usual hour long set list. However the highlight of the show for us was not Darren Hayes. It was the fact that Clare took a risk by coming to London without a Club Delicacy ticket and made it into the sold out performance! When she walked in a few minutes before Darren took to the stage – she was met with cheers from all of us and I even had a tear in my eye because of this (she doesn’t know that yet…) It was just such an amazing thing as the show wouldn’t have been the same if Clare didn’t make it in.
Afterwards a group of us went to Medi Kitchen for some fishcakes and chips and Ash played for us his demo tape which sounded quite good. Megs and Noemi then headed back for Cardiff and myself and Geri, Richard and Adam went for one final drink at The Village in which Adam kept finding a pole dancer’s ass being brushed past his face. I’m sure Adam didn’t mind. LOL.
So that was our big gay day. A lot different than planned, but overall it was pretty fun. Amidst the madness, Geri bought me the cutest pair of Adidas trainers with HOT ORANGE laces which I love and I bought Geri some multi-coloured underwear at one of the Pride vendor booths. We ran into SDB from Switch22 who was doing some promo work for British Airways out in the rain as well!
Coming up on EQ next week – Well, we might just have an interview with a certain swedish powerhouse to share with you as well as some new MySpace finds that are reminding us a lot of The Human League. Until then, check out and download some of the songs in this weeks new EQ Chart, and enjoy some more pics below. Take it easy EQs!
"How do you like my white pimp suit?"
Justin Shave and his infamous ‘protective eyewear’…
This guy clearly was having problems doing sign language to ‘Me, Myself and (I)’…bless.
"Gimme me a beat!"
"Stop If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before"…or "Stop In The Name Of Love"… ???
EQ and Geri – Reporting from under the umbrellas…
And someone took this video of Dragonette…we decided to stay dry instead…