| Having tickets to both nights of Avril Lavigne’s Black Star tour’s stop at the HMV Hammersmith Apollo it added a little to the variety that the support acts on the two nights where different – but not that different – on the Wednesday, the male four piece guitar base rock group that is Lawson provided the warm up for Avril – which turned out to be prolonged and any effect it might have had, would have off by the time Avril made it on stage (the delay wasn’t her fault…). Having said that I don’t think the audience needed any warming up – it was a hot summer evening and they where all very much up for the evening… Putting a couple of cover into their short set ensure audience vocal cords could be exercised. |
| Filling the role of “special guests” on the Thursday were Twenty Twenty - this time a three piece male guitar based rock group… They could have done with covering a couple of well know anthems to. Given the predominately female audience the choice of two “boy bands” was probably a good one – both band certainly had fans in the crowd and filled the venue with music to get the people moving… |
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 | Unfortunately on the Wednesday night just about the time the audience were expecting the lights to dim, over the PA it was announced that Avril had experienced a “mechanical problem” – alluding to a broken down car or similar – and would be 45 minutes late in starting her set. It turned out there had been some sort of breach of security – and it had been touch and go if Avril was going to be able to perform.. Avril’s shows appears to be plagued by security failures… Something else also stood out - the complete lack of of photographers in the normal location between the stage and audience – it turned out they’d been relegated to the sound desk – yet another artist who’s live image would be predominately documented by shaky camera phones. Maybe her management team should put a little focus more on security rather than controlling photographers who only have providing Avril with the best possible publicity in mind. |
| Thursday night was much less eventful – and comparing the two evenings it was clear how shaken Avril had been by the pre-show events on the first night. She’s denied that the loss of her voice towards the end of the set that force her to allow the audience to complete one song for her – which they were more than happy to do, was related to the earlier events – but they couldn’t have helped… Wednesday performance was more than enough to please the sold out audience that night – but the rather less full Thursday night audience got a different level of Avril – highlights of the evening included a cover of Coldplay’s Fix You. Performing without the support of backing vocalists to fill the gaps demonstrate the range and power of Avril’s vocal abilities – and the lack of dancers when completely unnoticed. There may be others tilting for Avril’s title of princess of the teenage angst anthem – but even at 26 she is still representing Canada in that class. |  |
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