Yes, I know there's another Glastonbury thread on here, but I just wanted to make a specific comment about one specific act whom I really like ....

Friday evening's BBC2 schedule promised us the headlining act (MUSE) live on the pyramid stage. I was really looking forward to that and recorded it for listening last night (Saturday).

I can't help thinking that we were rather short-changed in the end - possibly because of either football or politics - because the coverage appeared to start from between two numbers and the show ended after only about 40-odd minutes.

MUSE always give good value on their live shows, so such a short performance seemed rather out of character.

Any other MUSE fans care to comment?

Not a fan (they're shite!),
but is one hour 37 better?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03xs070

They showed the rest on BBC Four, before switching to BBC Two for the remainder. The full set was shown live across the two channels.

Oh great .. how the hell were we to know they'd do that? Anybody setting their HD recorders would only have got half the show - as indeed was the case with me. It's all very well saying you can watch it on iPlayer .. trouble is, you can't record from iPlayer, so that's not really a lot of use, other than to see the bits I missed.

Just hope they manage things better tonight for the Coldplay concert .. them and MUSE are my favourite bands.

You should be able to keep it if you have sky as the full set is on the iplayer.
It will only keep for a month though.

Coverage of a live event and you did not wonder about the gaps in coverage on one channel so think to check coverage on other channels? No sympathy mate.

I'm glad I saw this. I watched what I recorded and commented to my son I thought it was short. He thought I was being fussy. I knew I'd seen the end because of Knights Of Cydonia but never realised I'd missed about an hour at the start. I'll have to go back and watch on the iplayer.

The thing is, it wasn't broadcast live, it was advertised as the full set on BBC2 with Underworld's full set shown on BBC4. For some reason they then decided on the day to show the first hour of Muse on BBC4 followed by Underworld, with Muse switching to BBC2. Confusing in the extreme!

That shouldn't take away, however, from Muse being absolutely outstanding on Friday night!

It was still coverage of a live event though with last minute decisions being made about what to show and when despite what they had originally planned to show. The sensible action in a case like this is to set a hammock timer for both channels and pick the bones out of it afterwards.

They may not be to your taste, mate, but they're certainly not shite!


They seemed to get things bang on track for Adele! No messing about with swapping channels mid broadcast with her .. oh no!

Wimbledon starts tomorrow so we'll have to become adept at keeping an eye out for which channel is showing the match we're watching, because they're bug*ers at switching stuff about when it comes to the tennis!

Indeed they are. I find it odd that you are aware of it happening for Wimbledon but taken by surprise that it happens also for other live events like Glasto.

i adore Muse ...but this was such a lacklustre performance from them - so disappointing as they are capable of more

I thought it was the best performance I'd ever seen from Muse, although it didn't half go on for a long time. Does the sound engineer apply Matt Bellamy's guitar effects for him as I can never work out how he does it when he's nowhere near his effects pedals.

I don't follow their music, so most of the songs were totally new to me, which is just the way I like it. One was an obvious rip-off of Led Zeppelin's Heartbreaker and they sounded like Queen at times, only better. I loved that beautiful slide guitar number and they amazed me with those staggeringly beautiful vocal harmonies near the end.

They use the riff from Heartbreaker a lot and don't hide the fact that they use it. It's not a rip off at all.

However not every band allows full coverage of their set and the BBC, in the lead-up to Glastonbury, said they would be showing an hour of Muse.

These things aren't always as clear cut and obvious as you seem to think they are...

Hang on. Saying that things are not as clear cut and obvious (as shown in the listings for example ) for coverage of a live event is my side of the argument.

Last night I went onto iPlayer and watched the first hour of the concert that I'd missed on Friday (originally broadcast on BBC4) and terrific it was too, including as it did one of my all time favourites - Hysteria.

This morning I went back onto iPlayer again to see if there was any way that I could download the entire 1hr 37m show so that I could put it on a USB stick and watch it on the TV as many times as I like (there isn't - it's a DRM protected broadcast). However, notwithstanding all that, I saw from the set list that Hysteria was missing, but I know for a certain fact that they did play it. I scrolled through the concert footage on iPlayer and it just wasn't there.

So what's going on here? Why would it be different today from what I saw last night?

If you download the free program Audio Recorder for Free, you can at least get an audio copy of it by recording it off your sound card in real time. It takes a bit of experimenting to get the audio level just right for recording (try starting with level 54), but worth it is you're really determined.

I managed to watch most of the set across BBC 4 and BBC2, and have to say the poor sound mix spoiled it for me

Thanks for that. I've also seen different bits of free software on the net which, once you've jumped through 101 hoops, enable you to download/record DRM protected material. Maybe I'll just watch the iPlayer stuff again until it disappears!


Funny you should say that about the sound. I always listen to this kind of programme via my hi-fi system through good quality Sennheiser over-ear closed back headphones. I thought the mix was odd .. lots of bass (which I like, being a player myself) but Matt's vocals were quite far back in the mix, I'll grant you.

Have a listen to MUSE Live at Rome Olympic Stadium 2013 (YouTube for starters). The sound mix there is really pretty good, but you may find some of the arty farty visual editing a tad tiresome - irritating use of B&W when colour should be the norm at a rock gig!

nope bet their good though