Torquay English Riviera Centre 1994 (gig)

Muse show
Venue	English Riviera Centre (Battle of the Bands)
Date	26th November 1994
Location	Torquay
Country	United Kingdom
Songs	4[source?]
Support	Unknown
Start (UTC)	Unknown
Capacity	250[source?]
Price	Unknown
Sold out?	Unknown

Gig nav
Jolly Sailor	←	Battle of the Bands	→	The Bull and Gate

A battle of the bands competition in Torquay. Muse were third to perform and did not win.[source?]

Knowledge of the gig resurfaced when Mike Dunn of Exeter started uploading videos thereof to YouTube, on the 14th April 2009. Dunn claimed to be a friend of another band which participated in the battle called Fever. A member of another band that played there the same night, called Generator, said that there were originally three bands scheduled to play there but one of the bands dropped out and Muse were asked to play. There were 250 people present, which is the capacity limit, as well as many people outside listening through the windows.[source?]

Matthew Bellamy stated before playing that they will play five songs, although only four were played in full, with an outro on "Who Knows, Who Cares". The songs "Who Knows, Who Cares", "Cut Me Down", "Emotion Coming" were unknown at the time videos of the gig resurfaced, although "Weakening Walls" had been mentioned previously by Bellamy in an interview. According to Niall, Sam Sparrow showed the video of the gig to Chris Wolstenholme and asked about of names of the songs, which he still remembered.

Speech

Before Cut Me Down	Announcer	"Put your hands together and welcome band number three, Muse!"
	Bellamy	"Cheers! Right, we're gonna [murmurs to band] that's alright then, right [murmurs more] We're gonna play, we're gonna play five songs that we wrote ourselves".
After Cut Me Down		"Thank you!"
Before Weakening Walls	Bellamy	"This one's called "Weakening Walls (the funky rendition) [laughs]"
After Weakening Walls	Bellamy	"Cheers, cheers".
After Emotion Coming	Bellamy	"Cheers!"
	Announcer	"Ladies and gentlemen, please show your appreciation for band—"
	Bellamy	"We haven't finished yet! We've got one more song then like half a song after it, okay?"
	Announcer	"Oh, well you're fucking it up now though, aren't you".
	Bellamy	"No no, honestly, honestly, it's worth it okay. It's quite a good song and it's called Who Knows, Who Cares, yeah".
After Who Knows, Who Cares	Bellamy	"Cheers, [?]"
	Announcer	"Ladies and gentlemen, who needs The Who, put your hands together for Muse! The Muse ladies and gentlemen, all the way from Teignmouth—and they are completely off their heads. ...and ladies and gentlemen how about a nice round of applause for the uh, three come-dancing contestants, who were dancing there, I thought that was fantastic, well done lads. Was it lads or girls? I don't know."
	Audience member	"Lads!"
	Announcer	"Anyway, well done lads. Well ladies and gentlemen, just give us about three days just to repair the uh, the instruments and the equipment, 'cause I think they've just smashed it all up, um, they've been watching to many Who videos I think. Well done, an excellent performance there. Now next, next up our band's going to be The Leech all the way from Brixton. Coming up very very shortly, as I said before in between every band we're gonna have about five-minute intervals, so get your drinks in at the bar, see you very shortly. Thanks very much".

Media

All competing bands were given video[VHS?] recordings of all performances after the competition. One copy passed into the hands of Dunn, who uploaded Muse's performance to YouTube. A dump of this upload, of which there are four parts, was previously available on MuseLive. It is in YouTube's format 18, which is H.264 and AAC in mp4. To date, it remains the earliest live recording from the band, and the only recording of the four songs performed at this show.

Setlist

1. Cut Me Down [watch]
   ^{(Telecaster (copy?))}
2. Weakening Walls [watch]
   ^{(Telecaster (copy?))}
3. Emotion Coming [watch]
   ^{(Telecaster (copy?))}
4. Who Knows, Who Cares + unknown outro [watch]
   ^{(Telecaster (copy?)?)}

See also

• English Riviera Centre, Torquay

Go back to the gig archive