Did you want to go and see the Take That reunion, but were put off by a) the superfast ticket sales, or b) the thought of standing in a vast empty room surrounded by idiots screaming at four fat old men? Well, there's an alternative.
Because East 17 – Take That's early nineties semi-rivals – have leapt on the cash-in bandwagon reunited too. Only, not too many people wanted to see the East 17 reunion and they've all got really fat and their songs were rubbish anyway. Sounds like a good night out…
For most people, a backwards-looking, transparently mercenary, soulless band reunion is about as appealing as trying to remove your contact lenses with an industrial sander. Not if you're a Take That fan, though. The big Take That reunion was something of a success, becoming the second fastest-selling tour of the year and allowing all the annoying screaming teenage Take That fans – now annoying screaming Take That fans in their mid-twenties – to go and stand in an airport hanger and scream at fat Gary Barlow and the rest of them going through the motions while they imagine that the last ten years of their dreadful life never happened.
Worse, though, all the other rubbish 1990s pop bands saw Take That's reunion success and wanted a piece of the pie, too. We apparently have an All Saints reunion to look forward to in the near future, after the girls realised that all of their solo careers – as singers, actors or TV presenters – were abject failures. But first, East 17 got back together.
You can imagine leader Tony Mortimer's East 17 reunion sales pitch: "i fink dat East 17 will stiwl be popoolar bekaws wee did dat song abowt steem and dat song abowt stayin annuver day and mi tumy hurts and i want more pies for it."
So all of East 17 – Tony Mortimer, Brian Harvey (who spent the intervening years between being sacked from East 17 and the reunion by being attacked by a machete and running himself over after eating too many baked potatoes) and the other two who just stood at the back making hand shapes – reunited for a giant tour. Until they realised that they'd never sell that many tickets, that is, at which point East 17 reunited for a one-off show in a smallish venue in West London. We didn't see the East 17 reunion, but other people did, and here's what they thought. First Alexis Petridis from The Guardian:
The ravages of time visited on Mortimer – and indeed on bandmate Terry
Coldwell, who now bears a passing, but nevertheless disturbing
resemblance to Blakey from On The Buses – do not seem to have affected
his scream-worthiness, at least in the eyes of East 17's fans: a
noticeably harder-faced brand of female thirty- somethings than the
audience at Take That's reunion shows.
And now David Smyth from The Evening Standard:
Songwriter Mortimer, whose neck is now wider
than his head, was barely recognisable. Boxy bigscreen graphics looked
cheap rather than retro, and many of the songs now sounded so dated
they might as well have been performed on the lute.
Missed the East 17 reunion show? Don't worry, chances are they'll be schlepping around the Chesney Hawks Jumpin' Jaks circuit before long.
Read more:
E17 Stay A Day Too Long – This Is London
[story by Stuart Heritage]
sean says
your an idiot Stuart Heritage. what the hell do u know, its easy to say what u just said, but its about the music. try listening to their clasics, they are hell ov alot beter than take that!
your just a mouth!
Noeky says
What a crappy article this is….. Written by someone who don’t know anything about it. East17 is a feeling and not even close to compare with Take That haha.
i am with Sean GO GO SEAN!