…The DJ's challenged us all to bring the house down with cheers . It seemed a little daft, given how few people were there early on, though he played some good music. I later found out that it was none other than Tim Westwood, hectoring a cool mix of people, some obvious hiphop diehards, some obvious R&B girls, some indie sorts, all colours and creeds ….

….Eventually Spymob took to the stage.Though they were technically superb they were very much lacking in charisma and didn't have anyone you'd call a leader or frontman… Think somewhere in the lineage of Jellyfish(without the image) or Toto but with a modern post-dance/hip hop rhythm section .. impeccable Beach Boys harmonies and impeccable playing, but they never really looked much like a rock band. Bassist Christian Twigg looked kind of nu-metal-ish, I suppose, and drummer Eric Fawcett did look just like Luke Wilson in 'The Royal Tenenbaums', but their main singer, keyboard player John Ostby looked considerably more drab than a modern roadie and didn't smile once. Possibly they might have gone down a storm with a middle aged audience after having a string of AOR hits, but they got a fairly lukewarm response from this one.

Spymob began one of the poorer features of the evening, which was huge speaking gaps between songs. They were inches away from being booed off stage for it.

For those who don't know, Spymob are also the backing band for N*E*R*D. and, after a bit more of Mr. Westwood, singer Pharell Williams and rapper Shay of N*E*R*D took to the stage with them to commence their UK live debut. (Third member Chad Hugo isn't touring the album for some reason of his own, so didn't appear.) The addition of some frontmen definitely took the whole evening up a gear. ..but even at the time I still felt myself wanting more… an extra sparkle, something to jump out at me from the stage …and when the glorious Kelis took to the stage, that should have satisfied my hunger …and, indeed, 'Truth Or Dare' was the first song of the night to really get the audience pumping… but she lost all the momentum when immediately after the song finished she gave a lengthy explanation of where she'd been for the last year…????..and then sang a slow song from her album with N*E*R*D having gone off stage…????. Just like the show nearly always had over a minute of speaking between three minute songs, the ordering of tracks was insane. Whenever one of the more kicking tracks like Lapdance got the audiences adrenaline levels up, it would be followed (after another speaking gap, just to make things worse) by a mellow song , losing all the momentum. Audience participation was sought often, and this amenable audience made a fair bit of noise, but if only they'd have got us to build up a head of steam, the audience response would have been deafening. Pharell said some really cool things, some anti-war sentiment, some praise of this multi-ethnic London audience that you wouldn't find in the US.. but he was never saying it from a point where the audience were in the palm of his hand, and sometimes I thought he was close to letting us slip through his fingers… If N*E*R*D had run in tracks to each other then at least they'd have kept us all dancing, but the huge gaps nearly always killed any feeling of continuity of the groove.

All the ingredients, the grooves and the tunes, were here for a great live show, but, because of their enormous status as producers, The Neptunes, I don't think N*E*R*D have had to build up a live following by treading the boards, and got the consequent experience of what makes a great live show. I hope that between now and the next time they tour, they take some time out to study the razor sharp pacing of live legends like Prince, James Brown and the long dance parties of George Clinton and Bootsy. The recorded ingredients are great, but the live recipe needs a lot of work.