Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Who were the first band to play the O2 Arena?

Well many people might think that it was Bon Jovi on the 24th of June, that's wrong.

The Sun "reveals" that it was Kaiser Chiefs, Tom Jones and Peter Kay on the 23rd of June at a party for the O2 workers. Wrong.

Greenwich Council Leader Chris Roberts says in the latest edition of Greenwich Times that it was the Councils "big ambition" that "the first people who ever performed on this stage were [those] Children from Greenwich Primary Schools" who sang their on the 20th of June. It's a shame that ambition didn't come true, in fact it clearly hadn't come true when those words came out of his mouth. So that's wrong too.

So who was it?

Well it was this lot......

They were playing while many people were still coming into the arena while the lights were still on and the first song they played was a cover of Dakota by the Stereophonics. Who were they? Well I haven't a clue. Can anyone out there help me out? There's a lot of disinformation going around about this semi-famous event and other bands taking the credit when this lot really deserve it.

So if anyone out there knows who they are please let me know.

Edited to Add
After checking through my photos and looking at the time they were taken the running order for the evening looks something like.
7.00pm: Allowed in the Arena
7.15pm: The first mystery band were playing
7.45pm: The choir of primary school children were singing
?.??pm: Lucky Soul Played
20.45pm: Mystery James Blunt-a-like man was playing
21.00pm: Rietta Austin was playing

Well it looks like Rietta Austin was the first to "headline" the O2 Arena, This Is London seem to agree.

However The Greenwich Phantom has mentioned a party for a bank and has had a reply saying that there was a party on Sunday the 17th. So did a band play that night? Was it in the Arena?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

what level was you at?

Mark said...

I think it was level 1...