Oscar The Third: This is the story of the birds and the bees

The month of May has not been kind to my creative inspiration. The weight of university has been pulling on my coattails for some time now and it is becoming quite a struggle to find the motivation for my own personal artwork. Hopefully in June when all of my assignments are handed in and I have a few weeks of personal time then I can really get back into updating this blog with my own drawings, paintings and other work. But until then, I think I will just use this baron period of artistic block to work through my backlog of concert photos and memorabilia. Live music has always been a passion and when there is a good concert to look forward to, it becomes the focus of all my obsessive quirks. I have seen a great number of amazing concerts over the last few years (all of which can be found on my Last.FM account), unfortunately there are not too many shows in the future that I can get excited about. I mean, I will be seeing Gary Numan in 4 days, but after that there is just a lot of empty space. I will just have to pray that some fucking amazing bands will announce in the near future, such as Alter Bridge, The Kills, The Black Dahlia Murder or Foo Fighters.

For now, I will just tell you about Katy Perry's California Dreams Tour. She played 2 shows in Auckland, New Zealand about a week and half ago and I was lucky enough to get pre-sale tickets (which was made especially easy due to the password being 'Firework') to the first show on Saturday night. The smell of candy floss was in the air and the stage had an extremely over-the-top candyland theme with a very well-dressed live band. The lights went dark and on the video screens began a tale of girl living in a world that repressed her happiness and freedom until something magical happened and just like in the Wizard of Oz, she was swept away to a whimsical world of candy with her cat, Kitty Purry. The band started to play and out came Katy in a dazzling costume, she opened with Teenage Dream and didn't look back from that point on. She played all of her hits and had a really solid set list, although I have never been a fan of California Gurls. Her numerous costume changes were always impressive, especially during Hot 'n' Cold, where she must have changed her out fit approximately 15 times. I think Katy's voice was really strong live, I loved hearing it free from any electronic altering or mixing. There was a part in the show where she slowed things down and it dragged on for quite a while, but the pyrotechnic display during Firework really made up for that. The only real problem I had with the show was that her audience (consisting mainly of tweenage girls) seemed to be more interested in staring at their phones, updating facebook and texting their friends than actually paying attention to the stage and Katy Perry's brilliant performance.

Katy Perry. 7 May 2011. Vector Arena, Auckland, New Zealand.