Kylie Minogue - SECC - Glasgow (29/3/11)

Life is is an uncharted map that rolls out before us. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. We have minimal control over what will be given to us and what will be taken away.
Take my week for instance.
On Saturday I was looking forward to seeing the Jim Jones Revue and The Bellrays playing in King Tuts on the Tuesday evening, but after one solitary call from my employer and a shift change later I discovered that instead of sampling the delights of rock'n'roll, I would instead be joining the glittering hairdressers of the world and enjoying the antipodean disco diva that is Kylie Minogue in the cavernous barn known as the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre.
Definitely not an environment that could be considered as my usual musical stomping ground.
Without sugar coating it, the facts are that Kylie is basically background music to me. I have no affinity to what she does at all.
I hear her on the radio, in lifts and shops. Sometimes I see her warbling away on television and that's about it.
I do actually own a CD that she is featured on. It's the Nick Cave track from the Murder Ballads album, but that's my extent of involvement with Kylie until now.
Not a bad track record really in my opinion.
Some people may consider that you can't have too much Kylie, but I'm of the opinion that if I had one more song other than the one I have then I quite possibly would have too much Kylie.
I guess what I'm saying is that I'm not a fan.
I'll even freely admit that prior to the show I harboured some preconceived ideas and fully expected to see a great deal of lip syncing, extravagant dance routines, glittery lights and gay men waving glow stick about.
The thing is I wasn't wrong at all, but regardless of that I was pleasantly surprised to find that sitting through a Kylie show wasn't the punishment for misdeeds in a past life that I thought it would be.
Truth be told it was the exact opposite.
In all my gig going life I have never seen such an extravagant show.
Forget Kylie and her mainstream pop pap. This stage show is pure escapist fun.
A big surreal middle fingered salute to the reality of the outside world.
Once you enter the world of Minogue it's like a Midsummer Nights Dream to a disco soundtrack takes over.
Mundane reality is suspended for a few hours and instead you are participating in a mad whirlwind of decadence to a bass beat that just never stops.
That it is aimed in the main to a gay crowd is very obvious from the very beginning.
The stage itself is made up of huge Grecian pillars with images beamed onto the background that could be straight out of a home made homo-erotic porn movie that would have made Caligula blush.
There is more beefcake and crotch thrusting in the opening five minutes than the movie 300 managed to deliver in a couple of hours.
This is actually a recurring theme.
Mythology, or possibly more MytholORGY would be more apt to describe it.
Halfway through the first song I was thinking that if Freddie Mercury had a Clash of the Titans themed party then this is what it would look like. All that was missing was the midgets in togas carrying trays of cocaine.
Although I suppose I should mention that half the crowd looked like they had already hoovered up half of Columbia prior to gaining entry judging by their wild eyed and sweaty dance moves.
The smell of Amyl Nitrate in the air could have given an elephant a migraine to.
It was so rife that the odd few kids I seen there must have been asking their mothers why they felt like their head was expanding like a balloon.
What an introduction to narcotics for their young impressionable minds.
None of this debauched behaviour was much of a distraction from the show though, and I don't mean Kylies performance.
I am specifically meaning the stage show.
Kylie herself can carry a tune, but is never going to be a diva with a voice to match.
She isn't even much of a dancer, but to give her credit she does surround herself with very talented people and by doing so provides more than just a show that is about her meagre talents.
Everyone else knows exactly what they are doing and elevates the performance to something that is a bit more than the usual stadium gig.
Within the time frame of the first couple of songs we are witnessing acrobatic work that would shame the Circ Du Soleil.
Men and women rise from pools into the air while lights catch the rivulets of water running off them as the gracefully twist and turn in hoops and on wires above us.
It's not long before we are back to plundering the costume department of 300 though.
Kylie bizarrely, or not as the case may be, appears on a chariot with oiled down muscular dancers pulling her out onto a walkway deep into the crowd.
From their sandals to the Persian styled - via Hollywood - gimp masks this could be a scene from the movie re-enacted in Studio 54.
It's more camp than a boy scouts jamboree and hilarious with it.
I'm not sure what else I can say, and there is no way at all that anyone could honestly review the show without banging on about the homosexual content of it.
Every male dancer very obviously wanted to out mince Louie Spence as they gyrated and thrust themselves across the stage. Pineapple dance studios must have a conveyor belt production line going on that churns these men out.
There's a large part of the show devoted to La Cage Aux Folie costume wise, although Weimar era Cabaret is shoe horned into this section to.
It's all a bit mixed up, but the intent seemed to be to squeeze as much of historical gay entertainment into the show as possible to meet the needs of the majority of her fans, and they were lapping it up. Loving it, loving it, loving it.
All that was missing was the bus from Priscilla Princess of the Desert.
I kept thinking that with one set piece being trumped by the next that the show would have to peak before the finale, but I was wrong.
At one point there was an angel flying past with Kylie sitting on his back.
When I say angel I obviously mean a well buffed and chiselled ebony warrior angel that has been oiled up backstage before being thrown to the crowd as visual foreplay for those who are that way inclined.
Now how can you beat flying around on the back of an angel though?
Well the answer is by turning into Esther Williams and doing some dance routines that involve a great deal of water, fountains that reach to the roof and a tip of the swim capped head to the wonders of synchronized swimming.
The SECC has probably never seen anything like this.
Or if they have then they have kept it a secret.
Saying that it was mental doesn't come close to describing the night.
This has nothing to do with the music playing at all.
That's merely and accompaniment to the circus that was playing out before everyone.
A soundtrack to an evening that was possibly conjured up from the fevered imagination of Julian Clary after he had participated in an over indulgent weekend where anything went.
As a pretty secure in my sexuality heterosexual male I found it to be hugely entertaining.
Not in a laughing at the gay community way, but more a laughing, joking, and smiling with the gay community.
They really know how to throw a party those guys.
A fantastic nights entertainment.