Steps are better best forgotten at the Osborne House summer concert

After taking a year off in 2011, the Osborne House summer concerts were due to return this year with it's traditional two nights of music set in the grounds of Osborne House – Queen Victoria's summer home on the Isle of Wight.

Unfortunately, the Sunday night headliner, Tom Jones, was forced to cancel due to a bout of Bronchitis. As a result the organizers cancelled the second night, leaving only a single night event headlined by the newly reformed Steps.

These concerts have never been a particularly raucous affair, attracting families who generally bring a picnic and spread out on the grass before the music starts. In the light of this is it was surprising how heavy-handed the security was at times, with several pairs constantly roaming through the arena, often standing right behind seated groups in a fairly invasive manner, before moving on to the next group – presumably having established that no-one is going to start something off with an aggressive looking banana or strawberry.

First act on the stage was girl-band Concrete Rose, who were introduced by the local radio DJs, who provided the between show music, as being "the first in an evening of great live music." A comment we found ironic given that none of the bands that evening were performing with a live band, only singing along to backing tracks. There’s not much to say about Concrete Rose, being a fairly prime example of their genre – four girls selected for their looks as much as their singing/dancing abilities, performing fairly bland, inoffensive pop. Vocally they were reasonable, and did a good job harmonising for an accapella version of Seal's 'Kiss From A Rose', but beyond that there was nothing to make them memorable in any way.

Much the same could be said of the next act, Vanquish, another four-piece girl-group who are so similar to Concrete Rose in every respect that I wasn't totally sure that they weren't merely the same group with new outfits – the style of music, the way they danced, and the phrases they chucked out to the audience between songs seemed to be drawn from the same book – probably first written by the Spice Girls years ago.

Sitting in second billing was Ukrainian pop singer Kamaliya, who having had success over the last ten years in her native country, winning Mrs World and performing during pre-show events at this years Euro 2012, now is setting her sights on success in the UK. Musically she sounds like someone you'd hear performing on Eurovision, mixing euro-pop with occasional bursts of opera and classical. With several costume changes from both her and her backing dancers – including one inspired by Alice in Wonderland, her act reminded me of a budget Lady Gaga. And although part of me wanted not to like her, actually she was probably one of the strongest performances of the evening, possibly helped by actually having a distinct sound and style, rather than the generic sound of the previous two artists.

All of which brings us to the main act of the evening. For those of you who don't remember (or have deliberately forgotten), Steps were the group that kept school disco dance-floors full in the late 90s with a string of bubbly pop songs, each of which had a set of dance moves attached. Having split in 2001, they reformed last year for a tour and 'fly on the wall' documentary TV series. Like the acts before them they were performing to backing tracks rather than a live band, but being the main act they had added bonus of a giant video-wall behind them – which for me is where the show went wrong.

If you were there to actually see the band you would have been disappointed, as at times they were invisible on stage. All the band were dressed largely in black, and only occasionally were any lights shone on them, leaving them largely silhouettes in front of the bright neon graphics showing a younger version of the band performing the moves behind them. The overall effect was like watching someone play a dance/karaoke game on a giant TV screen. Which while vaguely entertaining for a while left you wondering when they’d get off and let you have a go. While vocally they were still strong and they belted out the hits with gusto, beyond the group of hard-core fans at the front, most of the arena looked equally bored by the show.

After about 40 minutes of watching the karaoke show we finally decided we'd had enough and took the chance to get out before the main rush, wondering what the second night would have been like had Sir Tom not been taken ill – certainly it would have been better than this night was.

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