Other than a short stop en-route for an after concert post mortem, I drove straight to Hyde Park and reached there by 4.00am. Unfortunately the car park guy was not around so we were unable to wash (yuck!) but we did manage to change our clothes and make our way to the “queue” by 4.30am!

There were 2 lots of tickets available for Party In The Park - £27 to stand amongst 92,000 people at the back or the £65 Golden Circle tickets which entitled us to stand in an area at the front and to have our own refreshment and loo facilities!

I chose the £65 ticket as I knew that it was unlikely that Kasim would be shown on the large screens (the money went to charity too). A friend stressed that we had to get there really early and queue during at least part of the night in order to get anywhere near the front so I opted for queuing over getting any sleep whatsoever once again because I doubted that Kasim would be on the large screens and I wanted to stand a chance of seeing him.

However, when we got to the Golden Circle “queue” we were all amazed that there were only about 6 people there already!! They had people barriers lined up into six aisles so we joined the front of one of them. As it was already getting light, we just sat there and chatted before a couple of us foraged for some breakfast.

At about 8.30am there still weren’t too many people there and the security guards took us up into the people barrier aisles but they were still saying that they didn’t know at which time the gates would actually open! The tickets said 10.30am but the security guards were saying that it could be as early as 9.00am or as late as 11.00am. We got chatting to “our” guard so he searched our bags ready for the big opening (which gave us a head start!).

At 9.00am the gates opened and we had to tear into the ground to get anywhere near the front! My group had decided that the two of us that could probably run the fast, be less likely to let others in near the front and had the sharpest elbows should go first and the other two would bring the sleeping bags and pillows that we had sat on! (Another friend preferred to sleep for part of the morning and wandered in further back later.) Unfortunately I discovered after a few yards that my trousers were too loose and were in danger of falling down so I had to run holding them up with one hand! I was also annoyed that several 14 and 15 year olds overtook me! If a free-for-all was a common occurrence at concerts that Kasim plays, I would have to either get into training or request that anyone over the age of 30 be given a 20 yard head start!

Thankfully we managed to get RIGHT to the front and “somehow”(!) I ended up in a direct line with Kasim’s microphone - perfect! Despite the threat of being shown on TV and having our photo taken by photographers, later I was actually very glad that we were at the front as it meant that we could lean on the barrier and use it to rest our backs against when we sat on the ground waiting.

The big question that most of us were asking was WHY ON EARTH WAS MEAT LOAF PLAYING PARTY IN THE PARK?!!

This was the 6th PitP and when it first started it featured older bands too but now it’s known as being mainly for boy bands. Also on the bill were Simply Red and Shania Twain (who have both had recent hits in UK) but Meat Loaf, although a big name and having just sold 150,000 seats at concerts in UK hasn’t had a Top Ten hit since 1996 which was before most of the 100,000 people in the crowd could remember!

Probably 95,000 of the people there yesterday were 13-16 year old girls with a few boyfriends and mothers present too. All these girls wanted to see were the boy bands and the top 10 acts. Whenever a presenter would list who was playing today, groups like Blue and Busted would receive a MASSIVE scream and Meat Loaf hardly a murmur…it was embarrassing.

The concert started promptly at noon with Daniel Bedingfield playing 4 tracks (3 too many IMO!). After that acts like Girls Aloud, Mel C and Craig David passed in a blur, unfortunately a slow blur though! Between the acts on stage they had various Capital Radio (who were co-sponsoring the event) DJs waffling on. If they ran out of things to say they would announce the forthcoming acts (to cheers after they said each name) or they would say “Make some noise” to which most of the almost 100,000 teenagers would scream or cheer or blow ear-piercing whistles! Some of the acts themselves also used the “Make some noise” to get some reaction to their sets - thankfully Meat Loaf didn’t stoop to this level!

Another point to mention is that most of the other acts (at least before Meat as we left straight after them) weren't playing totally live, whereas Meat Loaf was. Some of the acts had no musicians on the stage and I noticed that another had background vocals playing but nobody else on stage had a microphone!

They also spent longer getting Meat set up (even having Mel C play a song on a different stage) whereas for the other acts, the instruments were just rolled out and the acts were straight on.

Thankfully it finally became time for the 7th act and they set up all the instruments. As they were finishing this, former Spice Girl Mel C played one song on the smaller stage. At this point Kasim came to the side of the stage and was taking photographs of the 100,000 audience!

Next John Miceli climbed onto his drum kit and started drumming an intro into Couldn’t Have Said It Better and then the rest of the band and Meat Loaf walked on stage. They played the same arrangement of the song as they had in Plymouth (I think) with the drumming start to the song (not the slow start) and then the full song. Unfortunately both Meat Loaf and Patti’s microphones weren’t working correctly at the start of the song. Also, on the TV airing Meat Loaf said something like “You don’t know who I am now but you will soon suckers” but that didn’t come out over the PA system in the park.

Kasim seemed to have loads of energy again this afternoon as he was all over the stage which was wonderful to see! He was wearing a black T-shirt or short sleeved shirt (and I thought he was out of his black period!) and blue jeans, plus sunglasses. I must admit that I didn’t take much notice of what the rest of the band were wearing other than Patti was wearing exactly the same as last night and Renee Cologne was wearing a “Look Mum, I’m on TV…here I am” outfit as it was a bright patchwork design dress with a bright red boa feather wrap thing! I’m sure that some people were adjusting the colour control on their television sets over that! I’m afraid that I also didn’t watch the rest of the band too much either…. As I was paying £65 just to see Kasim play three songs, I made damned sure that I watched Kasim!

Near the end of CHSIB, Kasim went over to a guy that was standing on the side of the stage and was holding up a piece of paper - I assumed that this was saying how much longer they had left. When I saw the TV coverage later they remarked that Meat Loaf had played for 32 minutes and that he wouldn’t get off the stage. In some of the papers it mentioned that they had to turn his microphone off to stop him but that definitely didn’t happen. Meat Loaf himself reckoned that it was 21.34 minutes.

After CHSIB they sang Anything For Love which I thought was a total waste of time as they only sang the slow opening part and then the duet part at the end! They omitted all the verses and choruses! One of my friends pointed out that AFL is Meat’s biggest hit so he HAS to sing it but I thought that this “ultra edit” (as Meat called it) was butchering it!

Meat started the song with the play stuff that he does on stage when he goes to sing the song but doesn’t. Usually a Meat audience will groan and then cheer and clap but, from where I was standing, there were predominantly boos!

During Anything For Love (when Meat was singing and there was no guitar playing) Kasim obviously had someone get his camera and he set it up on one of the amps and took a couple more photos and later he wandered around the back of the stage and took some from the other side too! Meat Loaf’s personal photographer from last night was actually on stage this afternoon! He seemed to mainly be taking photos of Randy Flowers though! I was told later that at one point he got in the way of Meat Loaf and he shooed him aside!

As Bat Out Of Hell started (the full 11 minute version!!) Kasim spoke to Meat briefly - I assume (but I could be totally wrong) about the timing. As always I loved hearing Bat Out Of Hell and they played it really well - the whole band sound very good together and were very animated this afternoon. At one stage I noticed that a camera was actually pointing at Kasim and they showed a close-up of his hands on his guitar on the big screens! Afterwards someone told me that they showed a close-up of his face too at one point!

I’ll freely admit that I tend to zone out Meat Loaf and listen to Kasim’s vocals (which were excellent today and very emphasised on the television airing, even though he was hardly shown) so I asked a couple of my friends who are real Meat Loaf fans and they both said that Meat’s voice wasn’t too good today.

There’s been loads of talk after the performance about how much Meat over-run and that he says he was told a different amount of time to how long the producers thought he would play for. During Bat Out Of Hell at least twice I saw Kasim mouthing to people off stage about how much longer they were playing for (“30 seconds” and then “10 seconds”), plus once he quite clearly said “It’s not my fault” so I would imagine that he was getting some flack over it all! After the song Kasim was the first person off the stage and out of sight!

As I mentioned before, I was standing in the front row and most of the girls were fans of various boy bands so they were just not interested in seeing Meat Loaf. The girl next to me remarked loudly (she knew that we were there to see Kasim and / or Meat Loaf) afterwards that it was “the worst crap that I’ve ever seen” and they hardly got any applause from the people around us. However sleepy head who had stood in the middle of the crowd further back remarked that the people back there seemed to really enjoy the performance and applauded a lot!

I had said all along that this wasn’t Meat’s kind of audience and that I doubted that many additional record sales will result in it but it turns out that he did receive a lot of publicity in most of the national UK newspapers.

Sadly there were few TV shots of Kasim on the television (only some distance pictures of him) so I’m really glad that I did go to the actual event to see Kasim play in front of 100,000 people!

And the next person who tells me to “make some noise” will get throttled!

Video Clip
This is a video clip in an AVI format which will take about 12 minutes to download on dial-up:
Couldn't Have Said It Better - Many thanks to Deb Matheson for providing this clip and all the photos on this page.