Gigs You Really Shouldn't Have Attended
For my younger sisters birthdays when she was in her teens I promised to start her gig-going experience by taking her to any gigs she wanted each year.
As a result, I watched Chesney Hawkes at The Colston Hall in Bristol whose version of Lenny Kravitz's Mama Said had to be heard to be believed. Still, I am still chuffed that it was me who started the chant of 'Chesney, Chesney' to get him back on for the obvious encore of The One and Only. Truth be told, I didn't mind that one in reality - the smiley cheese factor kept me going.
Nope, the gig I Really Shouldn't Have Attended came the following year when I was asked to haul her off to experience Wet Wet bloody Wet at the Birmingham NEC.
They played for over 2.5 hours. I nearly killed myself. The promise was rescinded.
Any gigs you really shouldn't have been at ?
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I think I will feel like this on the 29th November
I promised the wife I will escort her to Take That in four weeks time. I am fighting a terrible battle with my own brain. If I go and look downcast or miserable my wife will hate me, if I go and pretend to enjoy it I will hate myself.
Never a cross word...
I saw the quite sublime Clive Gregson on saturday and sat next to a chap who said that he's left his wife at home because the last time he dragged her to a show she sat in the front row doing a crossword throughout the gig, which kind of spoiled the vibe of the whole thing for him (and presumably for Mr Gregson). Although as he pointed out, at the bit in the show when the call went out for "any requests?" she did at least refrain from shouting "Four across - A, something, Y, something, something O, U, something L, E" - any ideas?
You could try that.
The kids are not all Dwight
Elton John committed a series of gigs in the Albert Hall at some point in the mid-late nineties. A colleague was reviewing one for a music paper, and neither of us being fans of the man's clamour, he decided to invite me, so that he'd have someone to talk to at the bar at least. Having been lured with the promise of free sustenance and a big-glittery-on-stage spectacle, imagine my delight when Reg, accompanied by nobody except a piano, and a man called Ray (a percussionist of some notoriety), stepped up to the mic to announce "Tonight is for the fans. I'm going to play some songs you won't have heard me play before."
He then proceeded to bang his way through 20 or so b-sides and rarities, accompanied only by the piano and the occasional lightly-brushed-vibraphone from Ray. Each song's first line was greeted with outbreaks of ecstasy from the absurdly strident crowd.
Having been shushed several times, I went on a forage to the bar and a lonely glass polisher looked at me with surprise and said "the bar's closed while the act is on" as though I might have known that in advance and I routinely get sent the Albert Hall's bar policy meeting minutes or somesuch.
At one point, so tedious was it, my colleague offered me £50 to throw my shoe at Reg. We had good seats, and there was a fair chance I'd have knocked him off his stool. Tempting though this was (it certainly would have enlivened things) I didn't much fancy being identified by my lack of right shoe, and thus being torn apart by the idiot hive mind of the fanatics. Also, no doubt, I'd forever be known as shoe-man in the tabloids.