Christine

Last week I mentioned to Mika that I'd be coming to London in October and he said that he's going to do an all-new show, starting in September.

He didn't sing Good Wife at all in Montreal. There will be a broadcast of the gig on a TV show tomorrow so just relax about the video.

It happened this afternoon! White cropped jeans and a white t-shirt I don't know why but the suit didn't bother me as much last night as it usually does. I don't know if I'm just getting used to it or because in this venue it was a lot more appropriate than a little Brooklyn club (it's a lot like Sadlers Wells). But he still looks 100% better in jeans and a T.

Love Deb's report! I think it has expired because they only stay on line for 24 hours. Don't know if Natasha does or could save it and repost somewhere. Mika thanked everyone for coming and said he had been nervous but their support and their energy really helped. He was in great spirits and sounded really sincere. It reminded me of LA in 2009 when Mika and his team really made an effort for MFC to get fans there and look after them. It was really nice.

So exciting to see Mika doing some serious promo in the US and MFCers being treated like the VIPs that they are It seems like this summer concert series is much bigger than when he did it in 2007 (and his outdoor show was rained out anyway) and just generally GMA is at the top of the morning shows now, unlike 8 years ago. He is lucky to be included in a group with Ed Sheeran and Jessie J and they did a great job of making the place look packed with Mika fans with the stars and shots of the crowd. When I saw they had put the gap in the centre of the audience for Ed Sheeran (unlike Adam Lambert who had a normal stage setup) I thought this was a bad idea for Mika and would interfere with his connection to the crowd. But of course he used it to great effect as a runway to get right down there with the audience. It was great to see Natasha's periscope of the M&G and I could tell that Mika was sincerely grateful for the support. I know his team and Deb went to a lot of effort to make it a good experience for the fans and for Mika.

I was in a Toronto HMV the other day and the copy they are selling is the deluxe French edition so that is almost certainly what will be available in the Montreal HMV. I can't remember the entire track listing but it has 4 French songs and the Good Guys remix is missing. I think all the other tracks are there though.

It's #6 on Billboard's Canadian albums chart. http://www.billboard.com/charts/canadian-albums

Back in the day (in Canada anyway) they had to ship 50,000 copies to retail to get the album certified. The record company also had to give assurances to the certifying body that returns were not expected in such numbers that the sales would drop below the certification value. But in this day and age it seems unlikely that there are 30,000 additional physical copies floating around France waiting to be sold from retailers to customers. In Canada for instance, Amazon is not even stocking the album, you can only buy imported copies. I live right in the middle of Toronto and the only retailer left is HMV. They have a handful of copies in all of Toronto and I expect there are a few hundred in Quebec and that's it.

They have often sold CDs at the merch table. They wouldn't have in LA because the album wasn't released yet. Otherwise there is an HMV on the same street as the Place des Arts and they have 100+ copies in stock at the moment. I'm not sure which version of the album it is though. Montreal Megastore 1020 Rue Sainte Catherine Ouest Montréal, Quebec H3B5L2 (514) 875-0765

I don't know if there's really a row AA. They may put seats in that space for some shows and not others but they are not going to change the diagram on the site from show to show. They may decide to add them later though. I had front row for a gig in Seattle and they added 3 extra rows less than 72 hours before the gig. So not only did they add all these people in front of us unexpectedly but they were total randoms who hadn't even tried to buy tickets when they first went on sale That happened to a friend of mine while we were chatting, long after the sale had started. The A row tickets just popped up out of nowhere and she managed to grab them. I'm so glad you got great tickets and hope you get a chance to finally meet him before or after the show.

Seriously that is a huge factor especially since it affects the setlist. I want to hear new songs from the international album. Not bonus tracks from a CD released in France which is probably what we can expect in Canada at the moment. And yes there is no way I'd come to Europe for a non-seated gig. I don't even care what my seats are as long as I don't have to queue. Glad you got some good seats though.

I would suggest bringing extras and handing them out to people sitting in the seats and include instructions ("hold this paper up during Talk About You" or whatever). Also print out the MFC logo and web address onto the instruction pages. We handed out something like this at a Quebec festival and people thought it was coming directly from Mika so they were very enthusiastic about participating. At least 1000 people followed the instructions and it worked really well.

I don't think I'd want to go to a second gig, especially if it's GA. There's a musical on at the Adelphi so it won't be a second night in that theatre. Definitely not queuing and no interest in standing at the back and looking at people's heads

I had been hoping to stay a week but just realized that the Canadian dollar is 2 to a pound so it is going to be obscenely expensive even for a short trip. Even flats are really pricey now but still looking at that option. May just end up spending 4 nights at an Earls Courtish area hotel (and one at Heathrow the night before). Anyway I think at minimum I will be in town all day from Friday through Monday. Wow that is so kind of her! And yes I think you'll probably see better from there than in the back of the stalls because it looks like the dress circle starts hanging over in the middle of the rows of stalls. I saw Mika from the balcony a few years ago in Chicago and it was actually really great. Perfect view and he even spotted us dancing like mad

I am bringing 11 or 12

Abir instead of Marcelle? Hmmm...well we'll have to try it out.

I have to be honest that I am probably too lazy to participate in this but I think it's a very nice idea. Especially having the circle sections appear like the sky. Maybe if some of these props can be easily and cheaply mass produced you can get more people involved and hand out to random people at the gig and not just MFCers. I think in a venue this size you'd want to get at least 300-400 people involved to really make an impact.

Can't wait to see you and meet junior. Let's make some plans. Lebanese?

Sounds like everyone got tickets in the end? Mine are not very close but a nice block in the centre stalls with friends so I am happy. Didn't think I'd ever travel to Europe to see Mika again but we haven't had a gathering of old fans like this since 2009 so I am really looking forward to it. Wish we could just skip the utterly useless pre-announcements on Facebook (come back tomorrow for some UK news!!) and these non-fan-presales. This would have been a lot easier with just one day to worry about buying tickets instead of 3. I had to wake up in the middle of the night and I'm sure many fans in Europe were busy with work at 9 or 10 am. I'll never understand why buying tickets to see Mika always has to be 10 times more difficult than it is getting tickets for other artists. It was easier to get premium seats to see Adele at the Royal Albert Hall at the height of her career ffs. Seeing Mika in London when he hasn't had a hit song in the UK in 6 years should not be such a ridiculous mission.

Maybe it's just different in Europe. They should have other controls in place if they want to stop people going over the ticket limit.

I have never heard of this in my life! I buy tickets every month from Ticketmaster and have never had a problem. I've never had a problem with anything except Mika gigs. And some debacle happens every time. It is especially egregious when they use some crappy UK ticketing agent to sell tickets in North America. Ticketmaster in NA is a well oiled machine when it comes to selling. And the tickets are electronic so you can print them out yourself, keep them on your phone or transfer them to someone else with a Ticketmaster account. You don't have to stand at the will call window at 6:59 pm begging for your tickets before the doors open as happened in NYC a few weeks ago. Even if they want to make no-multiple-browsers a rule I don't understand why See Tickets wouldn't allow you to close the browser window and carry on with the purchase instead of forcing you to start all over again. There were also a myriad of other problems like people having their credit cards rejected for no legitimate reason and the sale claiming to time out even though there were several minutes remaining on their clock.

Have to buy better tickets and try to unload the ones you don't want. If people in London are really dying to see Mika you should be able to sell dress circle tickets. But if it was just a couple of hundred people creating this frenzy today then it might not be so easy. I am sure the gig will sell out but it's a lot easier to sell tickets if you are Ticketmaster or the venue than it is as an individual. Many will see the show is sold out and give up. They are not necessarily going to come looking for your dress circle tickets. Stubhub is the go-to place for spare tickets in North America so it's a good way to sell tickets that are in demand. Don't know what it's like in the UK for the reseller market though.

I think you are right about that. Not creating drama exactly (don't think they enjoy fan drama to be honest ) but definitely the number one priority is making Mika appear in demand and selling as many tickets as possible to whomever wants to take them. Up to 1/3 of the tickets for the North American tour in 2013 went straight onto Stubhub. But Mika was able to brag to everyone that he'd sold out his American shows so no one cares if the fans who desperately tried to get tickets when they went on sale got shut out. I am really sorry to hear that some fans bought dress circle when they didn't want them, out of desperation. Selling 280 tickets at a time creates an artificial demand and there will surely be better tickets available on Friday because they will release another 1200. Hopefully there is real demand in London for a Mika gig and not this artificial demand created by a limited number of tickets on sale and many hardcore fans coming from overseas. Maybe then you can trade up for some better seats without losing any money. I really wish Team Mika would either stop doing these presales or use Ticketmaster exclusively. If there hadn't been so many technical glitches with See Tickets (which has been a completely useless ticket agent in all the time I've been a Mika fan) then at least tickets would have been allocated on a first come/first serve basis. As it was people had tickets in their basket and they were snatched from them due to unnecessary credit card declines, some weird rule they have about not having a second browser open, time-outs when the clock was still running, etc. etc. Then of course there are problems with the tickets after you purchase them. They don't get mailed out on time, they are not given to people before the doors open, etc. I don't see the point in doing sales like this. It just wastes everyone's time - the fans and Team Mika. This is the #1 reason I decided not to go to the Montreal shows. I am just tired of this hassle. I never ever have these ticketing problems with other artists.

Noooo Overrated is my favourite song from TOOL and I can't stand Porcelain. Someone asked me if "porcelain" was a euphemism for "toilet" and all I can think of now is Mika slitting his wrists over a toilet. I can't even listen to it. It makes me want to blow my brains out. To me the difference between OMS and Porcelain is that OMS was more abstract and raw. Porcelain is such a contrived piece of teenage emo which is ironic because OMS was written when he really was an emo teen OMS has always sounded like it's still at the demo stage but Porcelain is overproduced. Speakers with rhotic accents never use an intrusive R. So it's prominent in places with non-rhotic accents like most of England, Australia, parts of the US, etc. I don't think any region of Canada has a non-rhotic accent or uses intrusive Rs. Our east coast accents are closer to Irish than British English.

My French comprehension switched off after about 30 minutes so I'll have to watch the rest of this later but it is quite amazing. If someone had sat Mika down for this kind of public psychoanalysis in 2007 it would have saved me a whole lot of stal...err...investigation.