Best of the British Invasions concert fails to impress

Saturday night saw the closing screening of DIFF's Rhythm and Reels section at Dubai Media City. Julie Taymor's film, Across the Universe, told its story by using the songbook of the Beatles.

After the mind-blowing film that ran just over two hours, whatever was to follow would have to be truly breathtaking. Unfortunately, the concert afterwards, entitled Best of the British Invasions, was nothing to get excited about.

The band was meant to pay a tribute to the greatest British bands of all time. Starting where the movie left off, the tribute took on The Beatles for an hour, with silly wigs and badly played Beatles classics such as, I Wanna Hold Your Hand and Help.

Big joke?

For the first hour you could blame it on stage fright and sound trouble, but once the band stepped off for two minutes and then back again, this time as The Rolling Stones, you started to ask yourself, is this just a big joke?

The night carried on and more and more tributes were brought out — each of them poor. As the amphitheatre was surrounded by what can only be described as noise, the small audience became smaller. By the time Queen decided to take to the stage there seemed to be only 20 people left.