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Almost without exception, my gig-going has been small venues. Struggle with big ones and suspect I have not attended anything bigger than 2,500 since the 1980s. Mostly 100-400.
Also, no appetite for festivals, which feel like consuming music by the yard.
Supporting grass roots venues is great, but the age demographic I see around me sadly suggests that they lack a sustainable market. Bands in their teens and 20s, beyond hometown essentially friendship support, attract live audiences with an average 40-year age differential.
There seems to be no lack of younger audience for monster ‘spectacle’ tours - see Ed Sheeran or Taylor Swift - but 99% of the audience I doubt would be interested in taking a chance on seeing the next megastar emerge from the club circuit.
Maybe it’s my local demographic and your local pubs and clubs are thronging with youngsters who are interested in new music…?
Maybe it’s my local demographic and your local pubs and clubs are thronging with youngsters who are interested in new music…?
TBH isn’t the whole club/pub scene totally different than 40 years ago and er their phone ‘feeds’ are likely to be marketing stuff to them and new bands won’t get that exposure.
I just find it weird that people are at the large gigs and pretty much watching the concert thru the phone in front of their face 🙂
Definitely without the Mums and Dads demographic then a lot of these venues would be failing even faster, I think the mix depends a lot on the town as well - I live in a small Uni town and there's usually a reasonable attendance from the younger population. That said my local is a 275 capacity, so 100-odd youngsters out of a Uni of 16,000 is hardly a big turnout!
Clearly, gig tickets have gone mad - not only the mega stadium tours; I was clearing out some stuff a while back and found a load of old paper tickets. Even allowing for inflation, tickets in the mid 90s for decent sized bands were £5-6 or thereabouts. That's £12-15 now - and I was seeing chart bands like Pulp and Oasis for that. But then if venues aren't making money at the prices they charge, what chance at £15? While you can still see bands for less than £20, I guess the equivalent is now £40+
And with you on the phone cams - take a photo or a short video if you must for 'I was there' / to post on your Snapchat or whatever, but then put it away and dance with the stranger standing next to you. I don't have photos from most gigs and certainly not from the earlier ones when cameras weren't invented yet, and I still have fantastic memories.
But then if venues aren't making money at the prices they charge, what chance at £15
30 years ago I was earning around £2.50 per hour in a bike shop; that's £5.30 today. Minimum wage today would equate to £6 per hour in 1995, adjusted for inflation. Any industry paying wages at those levels has been hugely affected by the introduction of minimum wage, and the huge increases in recent years. If venues have to pay (relatively) far higher wages, then that will be passed on as much as possible - and that's without factoring in the big increases to overheads like energy and rent, etc. But a gig at a smallish venue that used to take 2-3 hours to afford on basic pay, takes 2-3 hours on minimum wage today. With a 2025 minimum wage rate in 1995, that would be a little over an hour's work to afford. Plus ça change...
Back in 1995 live music was cheap, but physical music wasn't; an album cost £12-15; it was a day's work and a gamble to buy something you might not enjoy. That's £25-30 with inflation, so the same as vinyl albums at RRP nowadays.
(For the record, minimum wage is a good thing, wage spirals aside).
Just looked at a couple of big gigs coming up at Motorpoint Arena - cheapest tickets £65. Jeez, I'd love to tick them off my list to see, but that's some new XT pedals
J-L junior and myself went to Manchester on Thursday to see Adrian Belew and Jerry Harrison perform Talking Heads' Remain in Light " assisted by " Cool Cool Cool " . A gig I will remember for ever, truly stunning....and all for £35..;
Kate Rusby on a whim next Thursday as herself got a deal through Central Tickets
I like Kate she's good at what she does and a lovely person. Know her quite well as we shoot many of her vids.
Other one we shoot vids for - who are defo pushing through a bit are Big Special. Good lads and I really like the Dig song but we didn't do that.
We did Trees, This here ain't water and Dust off. They supported Sleaford Mods last year I believe.
Going to see James at Lincoln castle next week. Probably seen them the most out of any band.
Just got tickets to see Factory Floor again, London again. October. Lovely
Nothing til July now, when I just had to see PiL again. That'll be enough of the oldies!!
Saw Tim Minchin last weekend, does that count? He was brilliant! Dunno why but expected it to be more stand-up with music, but it was music with talky bits between songs. Awesome. 🙂
JAMES - Lincoln Castle tonight
Great venue. Went for VIP - food was good so far. Nice elevated seating. Old man vibes.
Pendulum at the Piece Hall last night, brilliant 
James last night. Booth came on stage with a twisted ankle on crutches! Fair play to making it work.
Gig was good - not the best set list I've seen them do but was a nice evening and great venue. VIP was worth it when taking into account, space, included food, drink, toilets and access. 
LCD sound system last night in Brixton. 2 1/4 hours of pure joy. Super friendly and engaged crowd, right to the back.
There are still tickets for the nights next weekend. Just go. 
Going to see Iron Maiden for about the 100th time on Sunday night – it's a bit of a 'Best of..' set and they have some really fancy screens so it will be, as always, a spectacle.
Off to see Yeah Yeah Yeahs at the Royal Albert Hall on Thursday - never been there or seen them live so super excited
I’m also off to see the yeah yeah yeahs, but tomorrow at the royal Albert hall, after a day meeting in London, so work are contributing to the expenses. When I found the gig I thought I had missed the tickets, I think they are accompanied with strings for some of it and doing some acoustic songs. Listening to them on the train to London now. Decided to look for other gigs after booking these and so now have LCD Soundsystem on Thursday and Kim Deal on Friday! Typing that makes me feel a bit giddy!!!
That sounds amazing - for some reason we didn't check other gigs & are going to the theatre on Friday night.
Pop Will Eat Itself and Franz Ferdinand have both just announced tours. I'm going to use up all of my gig funds shortly 🙁
Westonbirt Arboretum this afternoon and evening (Wednesday)…
Bassists out there, you know when an instrument is deeply loved, when you’ve worn a finger grip deep into the wood!
Oh, and the support was Imelda May.
@princejohn you should be very excited about now as you have a great evening coming up. Twists on originals, a big ending from a local and a sparkly end!! I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
There are still tickets for the nights next weekend. Just go.
That refers to LCD SS: I've just twicketed myself up for tonight. Gonna be a hot one!!
Blimey mooor photos of STING than the Sting gallery on Sting.com 🤣
First gig since Frank Turner earlier this year will see us at the Royal Albert Hall on Monday for KT Tunstall. Looking forward to it despite work putting a spanner in the works with a 24hr visit to Greece the morning after...............grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
Snow Patrol at Westonbirt Arboretum on Tuesday were very good.
The first support act - The Florentinas - were really good as well. One to watch out for, I think.
Westonbirt is a lovely location for a gig but getting out of the carpark was a nightmare. Got back to the car at 10.45pm, got out of the carpark at 12.20am!
Westonbirt is a lovely location for a gig but getting out of the carpark was a nightmare. Got back to the car at 10.45pm, got out of the carpark at 12.20am!
Yeah, I got there fairly early, about 4.30-ish, so I was parked about four rows back and ten cars over from the two security posts, where you walk along to the entrance and ticket collection point.
Which means that, although I was early enough to get a place right on the crowd barrier, my car was right at the back when it came to getting out! Not as bad as getting out of the Wembley Stadium car park when a bunch of us went up for the American Football years back!
”Blimey mooor photos of STING than the Sting gallery on Sting.com”
I took a LOT more than that! The advantage of having nobody but security in front of me, and a high stage, plus Sting is a pretty photogenic performer.
Off to see Iron Maiden in at Birmingham Utilitia this Saturday. It's all material from their first 9 albums of their 'golden area', for which I was just a little too young for first time around. I saw them last in 1992 at Monsters of Rock as a callow youth, and this is a wonderful opportunity to see them do arguably their best stuff before they are dead!
First gig since Frank Turner earlier this year will see us at the Royal Albert Hall on Monday for KT Tunstall.
That should be good, I first saw KT as a support act at The Fleece, in Bristol, then headlining her own tour at Fiddler’s in Bristol, by which time after her appearance on Later… they were adding venues twice, three times the size to the tour!
I’d taken some photos at the Fleece gig, and printed them out to take along to the Fiddler’s gig, a girl in the merch queue was thrilled when I gave her a spare one to get signed.
Well apparently the 4 Frank Turner shows in september and Million Dead in December aren't quite enough for me, going to try and go and see him 2 days before for a warmup show in Glasgow 😛
Off to see Iron Maiden in at Birmingham Utilitia this Saturday. It's all material from their first 9 albums of their 'golden area', for which I was just a little too young for first time around. I saw them last in 1992 at Monsters of Rock as a callow youth, and this is a wonderful opportunity to see them do arguably their best stuff before they are dead!
I posted on this earlier – I am seeing them on Sunday in Manchester. I'm a bit older than you, so I got to see them earlier in their career – my first time was on the Beast on the Road tour (as a spotty 14-year-old) and saw them several times on each tour up until the Seventh Son tour, then I lost interest in them a bit (because their output by then was bloody awful), but started seeing them regularly again on the Final Frontier tour. I thought that the Future Past was going to be my last outing, but, as I didn't get Glastonbury tickets this year, I had a bit of spare budget, so decided to go when a friend had a couple of tickets going spare. Turns out that it's looking pretty spectacular so I am looking forward to it 🙂
Just got back in from Brixton, and it's too late for reviews.....but WOW
and I was right, it was roasting
We went to see Santana at Co-op Live last night. It was an excellent gig and not what I was expecting at all. As he’s about 900 years old I thought it might have been a fairly sedate affair with him going through a back catalogue of the old hits.
it wasn’t that at all! It was a proper full on Latino party vibe with an array of amazing musicians getting everyone up dancing. It was bloody great! A fantastic atmosphere!
One thing of note…. the average age of the audience was the highest of any gig I’ve ever been to, and when it comes to annoyingly holding iPhones up and filming, boomers are far, far worse for it than teenagers!
Co-op Live is also a pretty impressive venue.
Quite impressed by the demographic of LCD Soundsystem crowd. As an older band, quite a lot of youngsters there, there's hope for them yet!
Pulp in Birmingham last night, Jarvis was super energetic and looked like he was absolutely loving it.
the proportion of grizzly faced men in their 40s and 50s (my demographic) was higher than I expected but still a decent amount of young folk. Not as many iPhone cinematographers as I’ve seen at other gigs
@princejohn you should be very excited about now as you have a great evening coming up. Twists on originals, a big ending from a local and a sparkly end!! I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Yup was a great evening - even tho our seats were right at the back of the top tier. Even quite enjoyed the 10pm curfew Much more civillised 😀
Anyone else see Kim Deal in Manchester last week?
Quite aside from how great she and her 10 piece band were, the sound in the New Century Hall was the best I've ever heard at a decent sized venue.
We're off to see Sting at Cannock on Friday.
Iron Maiden in Manchester was amazing - wall-to-wall 'greatest hits' and an amazing set with some really clever touches – they had a massive screen with fantastic graphics telling the 'story' of each track. On Hallowed Be Thy Name, Bruce was stood at the back of the stage, then it switched to a video of him 'climbing the steps' to the gallows in the distance – it was very clever and seamless – he really looked like he had walked into the screen. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures that do the live experience any justice.
Then, later in the set, the screen was dark and suddenly a huge Eddie jumped out...
Off to Glastonbury tomorrow, weather looking decent and some excellent bands playing (although not necessarily the headliners)....cant wait 😀
Off to Glastonbury tomorrow, weather looking decent and some excellent bands playing (although not necessarily the headliners)
You luck person – I really wanted to go (especially with next year being a fallow year). I agree that the headliners are a bit crap, but they were last year too, but I still loved it and found plenty of stuff to keep me enterained throughout. And Pulp are (heavily rumoured to be) playing this year. That would be amazing to witness first hand.
Had a great time with the Deftones last night at the Piece Hall in Halifax. The set list was sublime.
Nice! Chino's looking trim.
Great fun night at the Albert Hall for KT Tunstall. 2 sets the first being a 20th anniversary celebration of Eye to the Teliscope album which she played in full and was lush. Just before she played Black Horse, and this might not mean anything to some, a bloke came on the stage and did a bit of a talk about how KT had ended up on this TV show becasue a big artist had dropped out. The bloke was Jools Holland and he stayed on to play piano which was amazing.
Then a beer break and back to the second set which was her 50th birthday party. We arrived back in the hall and the band entered the stage in full 80's gear with KT in a sequin jump suit and spikey blonde wig, they proceeded to kick off a set of covers with Van Halens Jump. Then as the set progressed other guests arrived. Someone from the musical Clueless (I was clueless but my wife knew of her) Then Natalie Unbrugliuglia came on and did 2 songs with her. Bit nasally for my liking TBH but fun. Next was a bloody amazing performer in Mel C, possibly the only talented Spice Girl maybe? Did a thing, which I am sure has a name, where she sings one song and KT was singing another over the top of each other but with the same backing track of a revved up 80's track I can't remember. Very clever. Next up was Rick Astley who of course did that song but the best bit was that he went off stage and KT was chatting away and said "You know when some people just have a habit of popping up everywhere?" A spotlight slowly illuminated the drum kit and the drummer was gone and replaced by Rick who then played drums on a cracking version of Highway to Hell. Last and by no means least Sir Roger Daltrey wandered on the stage and finished with Don't get Fooled Again. For an 81yr old, he did a fine job.
All in all an absolute blinding evening with a great band, great sound, and a bunch of extras we had no idea about. And to think I nearly cancelled due to a last minute work trip the following morning. Glad I didn't.