Live gigs

[The Curmudgeon]

The Fortress guide.

The Curmudgeon enjoys spending his precious spare time (and indeed, this weekend if you've been wondering where I was) seeing bands play live. Well, listening to music is one of my passions (1200 CD's and counting), and so it only makes sense that I enjoy seeing the guys (and girls) I listen to at home playing in front of me and thousands of other punters.

I tell you, it's a changed enviroment these days. I've seen it slowly but surely warp itself into an entirely different beast, and nowadays venues have posters telling you that if you smoke, crowd surf or throw those plastic beer cups around you will be booted out of the place. Hardly the best atmosphere for rock n' roll.

Over the years I've seen the likes of Prince, David Bowie, Marilyn Manson, Placebo, Aerosmith, Ash, Dandy Warhols, Slipknot, Terrorvision, Manic Street Preachers, Blur and many more, and through that time, I've compiled a little list of do and don't even think about doing's which we all should live by.

1. If you're going to see, say, Metallica, DON'T wear a Metallica T-shirt to the gig. It's like saying, "hey! Look at the band I like! The ONLY band I like!" Feel free to wear that Metallica shirt to any other gig, though.

2. On that subject, T-shirts are an excellent way to give a hint of your personality to the thousand other strangers around you (but should only be worn if you actually like the thing on your chest, see my "FAKER" thread from earlier). Retro TV shows, comic book figures, cartoon stars, clever slogans and other bands are must-wears. My particular favourite right now? The Silver Surfer T-shirt I bought in Florida. Just.. awesome.

3. This is a fairly new trend which threatens to become the most irritating thing at a live gig. Camera phones. Taking a picture is fine, but its these jokers with those damn video camera in their phones, standing rigidly with their arm held out like some Olympic torch cardboard cutout. And what exactly do you hope to be filming? Because when you get home and want to show your friends the exciting gig you've been to, all they'll see is a blurry, bright smudge surrounded by a wall of noise. Mmm, THAT's a keeper.

4. If you're at a smaller gig and you're the sort that shouts things out to the band - DON'T shout for their biggest hit song. I remember reading about the band Electric Six at Glastonbury, and how almost the entire audience chanted "Gay Bar" at them. If you're going to request songs, try and show that you actually give a shit about the band and shout for a little heard B-side or an old album track or something, not the only thing Average Joe has heard of.

5. Speaking of smaller gigs, these are the BEST place to see a band. It may sound obvious, but I know people that have turned their nose up at bands because they're not playing the biggest venue possible. Big gigs are, usually, shit. Expensive ticket notwithstanding, if you do manage to get to the front, you're surrounded by 50,000 other people who want to be where YOU are. Don't get me wrong, I go to see a band I like wherever they play, and in doing so I've learned a valuable lesson - the bigger the act, the worse the audience. For example, I went to see Bon Jovi (don't laugh, The Wife was going with her friends and wanted me to go) and I expected a crowd of 40 somethings in tight jeans, denim waist-coats and fading hair-lines. Boy, was THAT a mistake. The roughest, scariest crowd EVER. Every drunken maniac and snaggled-toothed whore you've ever crossed the street to avoid were standing around me baying like the wretched souls of the damned.
Small gigs - with crowds interested in the band and the music rather than knuckledraggers wanting to hear The Hits - is where it's at.

6. Support acts don't always suck. It always pisses me off when the support act comes on and 60% of the crowd are still at the bar. True, some of them aren't worth talking about, but I've seen some up and coming acts that have outshone the headliners. And I remember seeing the now massive (in the UK at least) Razorlight and Franz Ferdinand opening up for little known acts in tiny venues. You never know - Your New Favourite Band could be right in front of you.



Anyway, I don't want to go into Invisible Wolfman thread lengths here or anything, so I'll end this finger wagging just now. So, Dwellers - any more irritations that you have if you ever go to a live show? And tell the other Dwellers who you've seen and who you loved, who sucked... whatever - this is a Live Music Discussion Thread. Do as you will.

[anonymous]

Man, I could go on all day about this one. First off, two-man mosh pits are not in any way cool. Gayer than Brokeback Mountain and Ricky Martin put together is what it is. Second, if you're going to stand in or next to the REAL mosh pit, don't fucking punch somebody if they run into you; if you don't wanna get bumped, just don't stand there. Third, if you're going to throw something at the band (which you shouldn't, anyway) make sure your projectile of choice can make it to the stage. Some asshole clobbered me in the back of the head with a half-full water bottle at an Offspring concert once. Ouch. Lastly, for now, just because women are pretty and significantly smaller than you does not mean you can rip off their top and/or fondle them. At one outdoor show, some SOB ripped off some little girl's bikini top and about a dozen hands shot out of nowhere to get some. I won't even get started on how pathetic this is, so I'll just say that if I'd been able to turn around and see who these bastards were while I was peeling their hands off of her, I would have squeezed all 10 or so of their necks in between my two hands at once and squeezed till they all popped. That's the problem with crowds that size, the anonymity. At a smaller show, the motherfuckers would have been promptly stomped into the ground. At these outdoor festivals, it's so packed that it's hard to see who's who and what's even going on half the time. I'll leave it at that for now, but I got a million of 'em. Great post, Curmudgeon.

[The Curmudgeon]

Woah!

Who is this masked stranger? A long, superb rant from someone who's obviously been to a few gigs in their time. Excellent.

Welcome aboard, mysterious one. Hope you come back another time - with a name this time..

[trashcanman]

I posted that long ago, my friend. I must have forgotten to sign my name and check back for your reply. I haven't been to a concert in ages now; I feel like I'm slowly withering away....
Anyways, I'll add that the best live bands I've seen are Primus, Black Sabbath (the reunion tour before Ozzy lost his voice was legendary), Iron Maiden, System of a Down, Slipknot (before they wussed out), AFI (ditto), The Vandals, Sammy Hagar (immediately after the VH split the man was on fire), Otep, and Lacuna Coil, to name a few. The worst was a Bush/Moby show that my clueless sister bought me tickets too so I felt obligated to go. Moby just pressed a button to play each song and mostly stood there looking at us or humped the keyboard he never played and occasionally jumped up and down. He had this girl with a bass that she didn't play; she just held it, hand flat against the strings and rocked out. There was a drummer too, but you could barely hear him over the obnoxious techno beats. Absolute crap, the only artist I've ever heckled. Bush was, well, Bush. Bland and whiny-voiced as can be, though they must have sounded like freakin' Led Zeppelin to that crowd after sitting through Moby.