Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Down Memory Lane
Just back from a lightning visit to Liverpool. Unfortunately, I did not have time to download this rather interesting Musical Tour of the City and then listen to the boy Wylie! guide me around my hometown via its rather impressive musical heritage. I spent most of the weekend in the pub.
Monday, January 22, 2007
2007 and Gigs are rubbish
2007 and one of several resolutions is to blog more. I have finally admitted defeat in my attempts to construct a template that has everything just where I want it and how I want it, and I have settled for a rather more stable and less ambitious version for the time being.
Anyway, reading today's Observer Music Monthly piece on 25 of the greatest gigs ever, I was reminded of just how little I enjoy 'live' music. Predictably, the likes of Bono trot out the usual guff about how the night he saw The Clash at Trinity College in 1977 was 'Year Zero. The shock of the new, where everything reconfigured.' Unfortunately, I cannot claim to have had any Bono-like experiences at gigs that turned me into Pol Pot, and I sadly have most sympathy for Damien Hurst when he confesses that, '..the favourite part of any gig I've ever been to is walking out at the end, or sometimes in the middle.'
It is not that I am getting old; the truth is that I never really liked gigs that much when I was younger. If I had done then I am sure that I would have gone to more of them. There have been concerts that I have enjoyed; Echo and the Bunnymen at the Liverpool Empire in 1987, Autechre upstairs in a pub in Sheffield in 1995 and Kraftwerk in Barcelona a few years ago. However, some have seemed longer than a compilation of Jimmy Page guitar solos. A particularly wretched Soul Asylum concert in the early '90's springs to mind (I was dragged along by a Canadian friend after I had press ganged him into coming to see Teenage Fanclub a few weeks earlier). They were drunk, abusive and incompetent, and I can still remember the relief when the house lights came on before they had a chance to return to the stage and continue the torture with more grunge-lite drivel.
Gigs go on for too long, are too expensive, the sound is always rubbish, and they are more often than not a huge let down. So, instead of going to concerts, I shall instead inflict upon the internet community a first podcast in the next few days or so, taking my cue from the prolific Slaminsky, as she suggested that I should further clog up cyberspace with some more music that nobody wants to hear when I bumped into her over Christmas. Clear your diaries.
Anyway, reading today's Observer Music Monthly piece on 25 of the greatest gigs ever, I was reminded of just how little I enjoy 'live' music. Predictably, the likes of Bono trot out the usual guff about how the night he saw The Clash at Trinity College in 1977 was 'Year Zero. The shock of the new, where everything reconfigured.' Unfortunately, I cannot claim to have had any Bono-like experiences at gigs that turned me into Pol Pot, and I sadly have most sympathy for Damien Hurst when he confesses that, '..the favourite part of any gig I've ever been to is walking out at the end, or sometimes in the middle.'
It is not that I am getting old; the truth is that I never really liked gigs that much when I was younger. If I had done then I am sure that I would have gone to more of them. There have been concerts that I have enjoyed; Echo and the Bunnymen at the Liverpool Empire in 1987, Autechre upstairs in a pub in Sheffield in 1995 and Kraftwerk in Barcelona a few years ago. However, some have seemed longer than a compilation of Jimmy Page guitar solos. A particularly wretched Soul Asylum concert in the early '90's springs to mind (I was dragged along by a Canadian friend after I had press ganged him into coming to see Teenage Fanclub a few weeks earlier). They were drunk, abusive and incompetent, and I can still remember the relief when the house lights came on before they had a chance to return to the stage and continue the torture with more grunge-lite drivel.
Gigs go on for too long, are too expensive, the sound is always rubbish, and they are more often than not a huge let down. So, instead of going to concerts, I shall instead inflict upon the internet community a first podcast in the next few days or so, taking my cue from the prolific Slaminsky, as she suggested that I should further clog up cyberspace with some more music that nobody wants to hear when I bumped into her over Christmas. Clear your diaries.
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