Robbie Williams

They say travel broadens the mind. They say the further you travel, the more you see, the more you experience. Not for me. Travels doesn’t broaden this mind. Travel teaches me that the further away you go, the weirder it gets, the stranger it is.

For most people where we are now, is normal, ordinary, correct. But where I am now is crazy and fucked up. It’s in fact, probably the most frightening place I’ve ever been.

But where is this? Let me give you a clue. All you see, no matter what direction you travel in, no matter how far, is grass, tarmac, and an island. Each island has four choices, each at 90 degree angles to each other. Each island is distingushable only by its name – “Highfields”, “Northfields”, “Eastfields”, “Lowfields”, “Eastfields”. For example. Each road contains a grid reference for a name. “H6”, H7”, “H8”, for example.

Imagine you’re stuck for hours in a computer game you can’t leave, and can’t find the way out of. The precision of these roads, squares upon squares, is clinical, cold, and it scares the living shit out of me. There’s no sense of progression on the roads. We feel as if we’ve been travelling for hours in a circle. Everything looks, not must the same, but absolutely identical.

Eventually all cars in this place turn to grey, all CD’s turn to Queen (and more of them later), and every house becomes uniform faux-brick in identical, characterless McEstates.

Its as if the entire city was flatpacked and built by robots in a production line. Even the tarmac has that bizarre shade of grey you only see in computer games and bad Hollywood films. It feels like we’re trapped in “Driver2” or “Crazy Taxi”. For hours.

Eventually though we find something which looks slightly different. Instead of endless rows of uniform houses and industrial estates that resemble nothing so much as silver painted cardboard boxes with carparks, we enter the “Shopping” Centre.

The shopping centre looks like money crossbred with a serious lack of imagination. I understand now the statement in Generation X, whereby someone enters as shopping mall in Denver and comes out to find himself in Detroit. Everything looks the same. Everyone wears the same clothes. Shopping malls will soon becomes subtle teleportation devices, the devices by which we move from place to place. Unlike Star Trek, teleporters will not be silver rooms, they will be McDonalds Seats and Gap clothing stores.

But how do we know it’s a shopping centre? Well, the uniform buildings becomes large cardboard boxes made of concrete filled with flash logos for “Fatty Arbuckles”, and “St*rbucks”. There’s uniform rows of cars, all slowly transforming into the same grey as the concrete, much like the T-1000. This is the future, and I don’t like it one bit.

The only way you can tell that the shopping centre (food court) becomes the shopping centre (electronics court) is by the small division of a road, which resembles some kind of last minute afterthought. In the distance silver corporate torture gardens glisten in the sunlight. Each one of the row of faceless mirrored ampitheatres of business is identical, and contains the headquarters, no doubt, of some IT company. To match the lack of personality, these buildings have noi appearance, merely mirroring whatever you put in front of them.

By the fast food store, a congregation of Disco Kids sit and stand, waiting for their weekly trip to some no-doubt equally anonymous nightclub, called, erm, “Glitzy” or “Ritzy” or “Mitzy” or something like that, where the DJ is Paul Oakenfold, but the music comes from a purchased-at-Our-Price-mix-CD. There’s 30 of them, dressed in the uniform black casual but formal shoes, light brown slacks, and black shirts with tiny pictures of crocodiles stitched into them, whilst the girls loiter around in the wind wearing high hells and shiny black jumpers. Except the youngest of these disco kids looks at least 30. Only two years older than me, and each one of them wearing more make up than Gary Oldman in Hannibal. To hide the monster inside, I suppose you have to build a new face.

And inside the KFC not one member of staff speaks English as a first language. Not a good or a bad thing that, just, I’d like to not spend 20 minutes ordering my pre-processed food.

I’m frightened. There’s something about this City of The Living Dead that just does not sit comfortably with things like say, personality, taste, or thinking for yourself. The whole city looks designed by executives with the sole purpose of extracting profit from the public. Anything like individuality was stamped out at the production line stage.

This is my first hour in Milton Keynes. I have three more to go. By this stage I’ve already agreed that I am never coming here again. Even if Joy Division reform and are supported by Elvis Presley, Jane’s Addiction, and The Smiths.

And why are we here? Well, to see Robbie Williams. Britains number one pop star, a cheeky chappy Lad come rock star who turned right from BoyBand Hell to the Boozer and somehow stumbled into a career.

Except we turn right to find even more identical rows of trees, roundabouts, and giant industrial estates that resemble 60 foot high x 600 foot long corrugated iron slugs. The only way we can tell we are even vaguely near the venue is by the mass accumulation of slowly greying cars, yellow suited middle aged men asking for a £7 parking fee, people telling men in yellow suits that that’s a f*cking disgrace, and policemen telling us “You can’t park here”.

So instead, the only way to park, and avoid an enormous queue is simple. Follow loads of other cars that are being directed, free of charge, by the Police onto the grass verges. And into Milton Keynes Bowl itself, which can only be described as a big park with some architectural shapage occuring at the corner. There’s a concrete ramp which is at a remarkably steep incline for me, and I’m only 28. There’s not even steps, just a sheer verge. If you were trying to come down that on wheels, you’d fall on for sure. Its like a stunt ramp for Evel Knievel – I half expect a row of buses to leap over when I hit the peak.

At the top of the verge I look back, it looks massive, but it isn’t. There’s large pockets of space where there isn’t anyone standing. In fact, someone could drop my block of flats brick by brick about 100 yards from the stage in the audience section and it’d sit very comfortably there without even touching a single human being. It’s all very very civilised. Families on day trips. Mummy and Daddy in rain macs and little kids seeing Wobbie. Beerish lads on a Friday night out dressed in nothing but shorts and beer. Disco girls dancing around with their fag packets in hand. Welcome to England.

I can see why Limp Bizkunt cancelled here though. Mommy and Daddy were going to please little Johnny by taking him to see his funny little pop group. What is that music Johnny? If Daddy’s going to drive you he might as well learn the songs he’ll be hearing all night long. 16 “fucks”, 37 “motherfuckers” and one hit single of “don’t give a fuck about the old generation” and it’s fairly certain that Daddy is not driving angry little Johnny to see the rock-music-people with their shouting. No wonder the virgins of the world think they’re parents do not understand them. But whats to understand? All they do these days is tune into loud guitars and shouting and black t-shirts and swearing and there’s nothing more to it than venting aggression without actually explaining why they are angry or proposing a better solution. In a word, if you express yourself and all you say is “FUCK, WAAAAAAAAAARGH!”, no wonder people don’t understand you. You’re talking gibberish.

I wish I was paid by the word, I’m ranting here.

After an appearance from the risible Toploader (why, of why do people insist on thinking any band that have emerged in the past 10 years that play guitars are “indie”?), comes a short break consisting of adverts. Disco girls dance around awfully to pop tunes, and the grown men wonder when Robbie will turn up. What’s the appeal of Robbie? Well, he’s like the loud charming womanising drunk who always manages to get away with it. We all know someone like that. Lads like him because they either want to know him, or be him. Women like him because they want to have him or mother him. Girls like him because they want to be his playfriend. It’s all weird. And oddly enough, Milton Keynes, is probably the most suitable place for him – it’s bland, thinks its got some personality, and so inoffensive it’s offensive. Robbies like one of those people who thinks that you don’t have to be mad to work here, but you know, it helps…

This comes across in his stage banter. He has an ability to control and manipulate a crowd with ease I’ve never seen. Jesus was probably a rock star as well. Knowing, mocking, dismissive of stadium rock, and yet Robbie can’t help himself. Cursed with cheesiness, in spite of himself, he’s a Stadium rocker like any other. He abseils into the venue, gets the crowd to wave their hands in the air, sing the choruses, singles out members of the audience to get their tits out, reveals the Big Brother results, makes cheesy jokes, smiles smugly at the camera as he sings, mouthing “I love you” at the video screen, pretends to come off, then back on, harrasses his band (“Come on band, get back on stage”), all as he is in some way obliged to do this, to appeal to both those not-smart-enough-to-see-through-the-big-stadium-moves who feel somehow enlightened by his mocking jokes (ooh isn’t that clever), and mocking enough to appeal to the post-modern-MTV-generation-people.

He can’t help himself from performing every trick in the book, such as cavorting with strippers, the giant dragon that breathes smoke, the self-consciously weird guitarist in a dress, the chest beating big stadium rock moves, the fireworks, the Star Wars theme…. Its all here. And even though he mocks it, even though his stage banter is mocking, aware of the sheer kitsch, shameless nature of whatever he’s doing, he can’t help but do it. He can’t but play to, and up, to the crowd.

The high point, apart from when he says he used to be in Take That and then was in a couple of the Spice Girls, comes prior to his first cover version of the evening. (The second is an atrocious version of the atrocious Limp Bizkunt’s Rollin’ complete with robot dragon), when he manages to debunk Take That’s entire career. Not only does he perform a solo medley of their greatest hits whilst performing all the moves that were drilled into him over the years as if by second nature, the jumps, the twirls, the dance moves and hand gestures, he manages to perform Back For Good in a break neck thrash mode, but also dedicates it to all the members of the group including “The other one, whose name I can’t remember but is very nice” (despite calling the other members his four brotehrs on the sleeve to one of the CD’s), and deliberately fluffs the words to both amuse himself and make a very pointed statement about the absurdly lightweight nature of boybands.

Probably the best moment of the evening is when he follows the line “got your lipstick marks on my coffee cup” with the probably scripted “well go and wash it up”.

Despite it all, this absurdly popular man has them in the thrall of his hand. Every one of the songs sounds like a greatest hit, and is received voraciously. The disco girls dance arhythmically, bouncing up and down, in a manner that can only be desccribed as, well, hilarious. It’s like watching puppies fight in a sack the way some people dance. Beer lads wander around cuddling plastic bottles of Grolsch yelling “No Regrets!”, banners read “point your erection in my direction”, housewives dance in plastic rainmacs in the rain, and everyone puts their hands in tehair, sings the words, and so forth, exactly when told to.

It’s some kind of mass séance, Robbie the conductor playing the crowd emotions like an orchestra leader. He parodies depression for his own amusement and leads the crowd into a mass camera-flash session at the count of 3, which is either absurdly populist or a little bit frightening. Given this is Milton Keynes, I go for the latter.

As I write this, its occuring again, right now in Milton Keynes and will do so tommorrow night as well.

It’s the encore, the final one, which is most frightening. I’m suddenly struck back to the eighties for four minutes. As Robbie sings a tragically note-perfect version of that most risible of groups most risible of songs (Queen’s “We Are The Champions), complete with a half-cut microphone stand, the entire audience as one begin to show for four minutes exactly what was so frightening about the Eighties.

Not only by performing that most selfish of groups of the eighties, the decadent, selfish, sincere and insincere, unimaginative and pompous Queen, most selfish song, it shows why England is a country that’s really not worth being proud of. “No time for losers, only winners” he sings, the intimation is here, “No compassion, no feeling, no consideration, just success and power, forever and ever” he intimates. The crowd get their lighters out and sing every single word. A phalanx of lights co-ordinate the crowd, and Robbie looks at the crowd in disbelief. I imagine that that kind of power must give a feeling similar to say, Bono in 1993, Stalin in 1953, and Hitler in 1933.

I’ve seen enough of this place. Get me out of here.

Setlist: oh, who cares? It was all his hits, like Let Me Entertain you, Love Be Your Energy, Old Before I Die, Strong, Better Man, Road To Mandalay, Forever Texas, Eternity, Supreme, Everything Changes / It Only Takes A Minute / Back For Good, Kids, Millenium, She’s The One, Angels, Rock DJ, and some which aren’t his own, like Rollin’, and We Are The Effing Champions, ,

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