Don't recall if I've seen this topic or not, but interested to hear of others first experiences of live music.

As a callow youth I had a liking for music of the metal/rock/progressive persuasion, but it took a few tries before I actually made it to a gig myself. Pre-fame and record contract, Marillion (who I'd heard on a local radio station) played at a pub in the next town to mine. I managed to persuade my Dad to take me over there so I could stand outside (as I was only 14) and listen to their set. We lasted about 3 songs (which with them could have been nearly an hour) before he dragged me home, fed up with hanging around.

Anyway... shortly afterwards Genesis announced a tour of the UK which took in a couple of night at Ingliston, near Edinburgh. Parental permission was sought and eventually obtained, on the proviso I went with my older cousin. Tickets were £7.50, which at the time seemed like a HUGE amount of money for a ticket, but piggy bank was raided and I came up with the cash.

I'll never forget the experience of walking into the venue. For those who've never been there (lucky you!), it's basically a big metal shed, more normally used for showing prize cattle and sheep at the annual Highland Show. I'd never been in such a big crowd, and when I turned to face the stage I was amazed to see that the PA stacks were enormous... about the size of a small house on either side of the stage.

The gig itself blew me away... it was so loud, the lights were so bright. I'd never seen anything like it - the vari-lights they used were cutting edge then, and added a great visual edge to what, lets face it, weren't the most attractive bunch of musicians, even in 1982.

A bonus was that, because they were playing the "Six of the Best" reunion with Peter Gabriel a week or so after the gig, they played a TON of older material... all the old prog classics (Suppers Ready, Musical Box, Firth of Fifth and so on) which sat uneasily among the Phil Collins era material - though thankfully this was before they REALLY jumped the shark with the "Invisible Touch" material.

Highlight of the show (aside from the really old stuff) was the medley of "In The Cage"/"The Cinema Show"/"Slippermen" followed by "Afterglow" at the climax of which the place filled with dry ice and all the vari-lites on stage turned pink(!) and pointed at the crowd (There's a great picture of this inside the gatefold of the "Three Sides Live" album). For a kid whose only experiences of bands before this had been on "Top of the Pops" or "Rock Goes to College", this was really something magical.

And then it was over.... my ears were ringing, my throat was sore, but I know this was the start of something big. I've been to hundreds of gigs in the intervening 26 years, and seen many that were better than this, but it still has a special place in the old memory banks.

Come on then - let's hear yours.

PS - Slight clarification on the "First gig" designation; the year before I saw Glen Campbell (in Vegas baby!) but I maintain that was a cabaret performance, not a gig. And anyway, it wasn't rock :-)

I've enjoyed the podcast feature where visiting 'slebs and Word contributors break the ice by talking about their parents musical tastes and how that shaped their own tastes. So, how about the Word readers?

My own experience;

Dad; Big Band Jazz

Mum; Broadway Musicals

I must have been the only 5 year old in Britain who knew about Stan Kenton, Count Basie, Johnny Dankworth and their ilk... in lieu of bedtime stories, Dad would sometimes bring the old Dansette into my bedroom, along with a couple of jazz LP's - we'd then listen to excerpts, with my Dad pointing out the features of the arrangements, the instruments in the band and the role they played... to this day I've got an ear for picking out the details of an arrangement, and will sometimes remember string lines and horns backing on rock/pop tracks better than I can the actual lyrics.

As my younger sister got a little older we made the leap to stereo, she joined in out bedtime music appreciation sessions, and that was when the Musical OST LP's came into play... West Side Story, The Sound of Music, South Pacific, and many more. This stuff is just ingrained in my memory now, and sadly I can even tell whether I'm listening to the Original Broadway Cast version or the Movie OST version of a particular show. With all the musical palaver going on it's a wonder I'm straight ;-)

Has it affected my tastes?... probably - despite a teenage flirtation with Metal, I've always been big on melody and song structures - not always in the traditional sense, but as I get older I find I come back more and more to "classic" songwriters, even at the poppier end of the scale... as long as it's a well put together song.

All right... over to you.

OK, as a follow on from the Birthday No.1 posts, how about Birthday Supergroups. Using

http://www.everyhit.com/dates/thisdate.php

I find that also sharing my birth date (12th May) are a number of musicians and songwriters, from which I can assemble this supergroup;

Songs - Burt Bacharach
Vocals - Ian Dury
Keyboards/vocals - Steve Winwood
Guitar - Billy Duffy

Oh, and Keith Moon on drums, McCartney on bass, just because I can (not because they were born on that date!)

OK, provocative title, but I read the article below with interest

http://www.slate.com/id/2179093/

Does audio quality matter to you? Or would you be happy listening to your music on pretty much anything? I fall into the latter category - Or to put it another way, given a finite amount of money, and effectively the choice between;

a) A super high-end audiophile setup, plus a few albums/CDs to go with it.

or at the other end

b) A mini system from Dixons plus a ton of CDs

I'd go for the latter every time.

This is partly prompted by an old colleague of mine who used to boast about his super hifi system and all the fancy components/cables that went into it. When I eventually was invited to his place for dinner with some other colleagues, I was disappointed to find out that while he indeed had a VERY nice sounding system, he only had about a dozen CDs to play on it. One of which was "Bat Out of Hell". Which frankly I though was a bit of a waste... seemed he was more interested in the quality of the reproduction than what was actually being reproduced.

Anyone have an opinion on this?

BF

Saw the peerless Tommy Emmanuel (Aussie solo acoustic guitar maestro) last night in Glasgow, and was struck by the people that felt the need to clap along with him (invariably out of time) any time something approaching a 4/4 rhythm was heard from the stage. Now, there's a time and a place for this... and at a solo acoustic guitar gig isn't it.

Got me thinking about what's appropriate audience participation and what's not... if he'd been actively soliciting us to clap or sing along then fair enough but he plainly wasn't.

I'm sure we've all had the guy (or girl) behind us at a gig who insists on singing along to every song... if I've paid good money for a gig I want to hear the artist singing it, not some tone-deaf muppet in the row behind me.

Anyone else get annoyed by this, or is it just me?

Cheers

BabyFrank