Placebo At Wembley Arena London November 5th 2004

Support: The Departure, Har Mar Superstar.

It was an event that Placebo fans were looking forward to. By the time Placebo arrived onstage after two support acts the arena was full. Opening energetically with the ever powerful ‘Taste In Men’ Placebo got their fans into a frenzy. The setlist comprised mostly of Placebo’s singles throughout their career. They were all full of energy and were chatty with the audience. In August we saw someone toss a rubber duck at Brian at this years Reading festival, at Wembley we witnessed the stage being bombarded by rubber ducks.
   Placebo treated their fans to a French version of ‘Protect Me From What I Want’ called ‘Protégé Moi’ which was amazing to see live. This was a single that was only released in France and I’m sure the UK fans found it nice to hear this version live. This was followed shortly by the storming ‘English Summer Rain’ performed with pure Placebo energy and Brian did a soldier like dance to the song. After this song Brian announced that the next song was one that they hadn’t played live before this was of course one of the new songs from the ‘Once More With Feeling’ compilation called ‘I Do’ during the performance of this song Brian was running all over the stage with a handheld camcorder filming shots of the audience and band members. At one point he went up to Stefan who puckered up for the film.
   Placebo proceeded to surprise the audience by introducing a new slower version of ’36 Degrees’ the arena fell silent throughout this song and it was one of many highlights of the night.
   After a short interval Placebo returned and spoke about John Peel, A well known radio DJ who had a huge impact on the music of today who sadly passed away recently and Placebo dedicated their current single ’20 Years’ to his memory.  They was then joined onstage by legend Robert Smith from The Cure who dueted on the ever beautiful ‘Without You I’m nothing’ followed by another duet of Cure classic ‘Boys Don’t Cry’
  Sadly though all good things must come to and end and what better way to end a wonderful gig then with an acoustic version of ‘Teenage Angst’ which was performed with passion and you could see that Placebo enjoyed playing it too. This was followed by Placebo’s biggest hit ‘Nancy Boy’ which was performed with lots of energy and the atmosphere in the crowd was fantastic with people dancing and having a good time. It truly was another amazing gig by Placebo that was over all too quickly and is certainly one I’ll never forget.


Setlist:

Taste In Men
Bitter End
Every You, Every Me
Protégé Moi
Black-eyed
Special Needs
English Summer Rain
I Do
This Picture
Special K
Slave To The Wage
36 Degrees
Pure Morning

Twenty Years
Without You I’m Nothing
Boys Don’t Cry

Teenage Angst
Nancy Boy