Its the first time I’ve seen New Model Army.
There, I’ve said it.
No, its true, I’ve never seen them before. I saw Justin Sullivan in Oxford a couple of years ago. Well, I would have done if I’d turned up in time, I got there for the last half of his set (what kind of headliner starts at 8pm?)
More freaky was meeting my accountant at the gig. Thats wrong on so many levels. Still, I did catch up with minusbat and godgirl, and some of their friends (whose names I almost instantly forgot), and pondered the possibility of the nurburg ring run, but I fear I’ll need to upgrade the Laguna to take on the Z, the Jag and the GTi, its no match for that lot. Maybe a couple of cruise lights would do the job…
The audience seems to have diverged into two distinct groups, the baldy guys with beerguts and the weird-hairs. The former group have cultivated a mechanism of getting through crowds which involves sending their gut ahead to clear the way before they pass through. Often they hold their pints above the extent of their guy (if they can reach that far) pouring beer on anyone who isn’t thoroughly repulsed by their sweaty fat pushing its way through.
The latter are still angry with the world, a kind of undirected rebellion. But they’ve all now grown up and bought sports cars. I suppose I’m spiritually part of this latter group, but without the horsepower.
As for the gig itself, they played for longer than most of the bands I see, well over an hour, but then I guess they’ve got quite a back catalogue these days – they didn’t seem afraid of playing things from all eras, so I knew a good chunk of the songs. Somehow the sound was too clean, closing my eyes, suddenly I was back home listening to the album, but with a slightly different mix and smokey air. Perhaps it was just too quiet, or maybe because I was by the sounddesk (always a good place if you want to listen). Something about the show seemed tired, I don’t think it was the band, they’ve been doing this for years and are likely to go on for a good many more, perhaps the audience are such old hands these days that they’re almost a part of the show.
Then the queue to get out of the carpark afterwards was evilness, the venue kick everyone out together, so clearly everyone goes to their cars to go home together (to their cars together, rather than home together, oh you know what I mean), so theres one hell of a queue to get out, and it takes so long that your 15 minutes grace after paying for your ticket exprires until the guys running the place are so annoyed having to check everyones ticket they just open the barriers anyway. And its not like all of the venues in the area close at the same time or anything…theres got to be a better way (which doesn’t involve moving to a small island and never seeing anyone ever again)
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