As part of their profile raising exercise, Palm have been hosting a week long series of events at The Boiler House (renamed ‘The Black Sheep’) in the Old Truman Brewery, right in the heart of trendy Brick Lane.
The shindigs were part of the official launch of their new Palm Treo Pro smartphone, and the company certainly dug deep in the PR budget to put on a stellar line up.
On Monday, the self-promoting, self-backslapping ego monster Piers Morgan landed on stage and disappointed everyone by being really likeable and jolly good company.
We tried to dig around for tales of backstage tantrums and prima-donna antics, but everyone seemed to like the bloke.
Don’t you just hate it when someone you really want to hate turns out to be actually quite nice?
Last night, however, was the one we really wanted to see – the mighty Human League in full effect playing a relatively small venue and promising a “all killer and no filler” set.
Now, we’d been harbouring grave doubts about this whole corporate gig thing but Palm had at least sweetened the pill by letting in some of the great unwashed through a competition on their event page.
Lurking in the dark recesses of our minds, we began to harbour fears that a wheezing bunch of has-beens knocking out seriously dated songs from long gone glory days may have proved a worryingly close fit for Palm’s current prospects, but we were wrong on both counts.
The band were sensational, with singer Phil Oakey in fine form, belting out the old floorfillers with conviction and power – and the besuited crowd responded in kind, getting off their well fed bums and giving it large to the band.
Some of their songs may be over two decades old, but they sounded fresh and contemporary, shaming much of the lame tosh served up by TV insta-celebs.
Perhaps this proves a good metaphor for Palm.
They may well have lost a lot of ground to new upstarts, but they’re still a solid brand and their new Treo Pro phone shows them building on their traditional strengths. And they can still put on a great party.
We’ll be posting up a full review of the phone soon. Just as soon as the hangover clears.
I was there and what a great gig it was.
Enjoy an alternative review on the humanleagueforum.co.uk site.