Do you remember the first time? Muso’s Guide’s first gigs
After discussing our favourite gigs of 2009 so far, we’ve gotten all nostalgic and decided to reminisce about the first gigs we attended. We’ve been completely honest about it as well – possibly to our detriment. Get the violins out…
Jethro Tull
Jethro Tull, Bristol Colston Hall, 1974
It was my first week at university and my first live concert, but actually I was a bit underwhelmed. I liked the album Aqualung, mainly because my boyfriend played it very loud (on vinyl, on his new stereo) when his parents were in the house and we were upstairs in his bedroom having other kinds of fun! Hearing it fill the Colston Hall, watching him really getting into the music and totally ignoring me was a frustrating experience. Ian Anderson frolicked around the stage with his flute, floppy long hair and velvet trousers. His voice sounded thinner and more whining than it does on the album. We all knew all the words, so we sing along and left the gig feeling hoarse and drained as though we’d been to a football match that ended in a goalless draw.
The Quireboys
The Quireboys, Hammersmith Odeon, 1991
My first ever gig was The Quireboys at the Hammersmith Odeon in, I think, 1991. They were a bar-room band that played sore-throated raucous blues, ripped wholeheartedly from the flayed corpse of the Stones and Humble Pie. The band were at least a six piece as I remember, but they were led by Spike and Guy Griffin – two craggy waifs who wore bandanas, rank eye make-up and cowboy boots, and traded in a kind of social club sleaze. They’d just released A Little Bit Of What You Fancy and were creating something of a stir.
I was only 16 and turned up in a hideous flowery shirt, a sin in itself, only compounded by the fact that I then went and bought a band t-shirt and put it on. What I can recall is minimal: tyre-waisted rock hags screaming at Spike, equally ragged men, all creased skin and sun-bleached bandanas. And my dumb mate and me standing at the entrance to one of the stairwells on the balcony and jumping up and down a lot. Even from this critical distance I’m annoying myself.
Glastonbury 1995
Glastonbury 1995
In 1995, I scammed my school out of a travel grant to attend the “Glastonbury Festival of Performing Arts” (and even managed to win a small prize for my first piece of music journalism). Technically, the first band I ever saw live were akshly kinda hip and Wire/Plan B-friendly: The Boredoms. Mind-blowing stuff: Eye leapt off the drumkits (plural) repeatedly, and the music seemed to spiral in front of us. There was a place, away from the stage, where the compression-waves from the bass-bins met and made you feel like your bones had turned to jelly. I was still young enough to be intimidated by “weird music” but I loved every minute of The Boredoms. Otherwise, G’bury ’95 was very Britpop, with a distinct sense of history being made, unlike (say) Spike Island, by all accounts. Oasis debuted most of Morning Glory (cue: stampedes where people were trampled), and Pulp reached their apotheosis (genuinely epiphanous; the spacecraft landed, as Jarvis sang; you could feel how magical it was for them to be here after so many years; ‘Common People’ was destined to be an anthem forever). The Verve were dull… not half as fun as Menswe@r, although neither looked set to last. During The Cure’s set, some girls shared their whisky and weed with us, with the result that (later on) the USS Enterprise seemed to be coming out of the screen at the open-air cinema.
It wasn’t until autumn ’95 that I saw my first proper gig – Garbage at Brixton Academy, and the next year (Lost Britpop greats) Subcircus at the Garage (first sticky-floored and dank indie gig). I knew I’d be getting home late from the latter, so I borrowed a masterkey, which meant I could sleep under a desk at school… all of which means that whenever I’m asked about my first gig, I tend to think of waking up at dawn, walking through the woods, and woozily meeting a deer that seemed to be a way of the universe saying “Hey! You’ve arrived”.
A1
A1, Birmingham NEC, the ’90s some time…
Well as it goes, my first gig (I think) was at the Birmingham NEC with my parents as a way-too-cool pre-tween. I’d been brought up on a musical diet of such delights as Craig McLaughlan, Mel and Kim, Luther Vandross and Whitney Houston (before I discovered Blur and Pulp), so it was no surprise that I was dragged kicking and screaming (not really – in fact not at all) to see a Pop A-List of the Year including, wait for it, A1 and Scooch. I have a feeling 3T may have played there too, maybe also 911 – they were so seminal that they merely fused into a conglomerate of Hermesetas Gold. Note how I’ve used more commas and brackets than usual; this is to make it read more like a stream-of-consciousness as opposed to a memory I’ve savoured in all of its gloriosity.*
*Of course if you ask me nicely, I’ll be able to provide you a setlist and tell you the middle-name of 911′s drummer. Oh, wait…
Nicky Wire of MSP
Manic Street Preachers, Newcastle Arena, 1998
As a band who shaped my musical upbringing more than any other have so far, it’s quite fitting that my first gig happened to be the Manic Street Preachers in December 1998. It’s probably not a tour that will go down as a classic chapter in Manics history. They were touring This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours which, as much as I like it, isn’t their most thrilling of records, and it also saw Nicky’s brief, inexplicable, and ill-fated experiment with a skipping rope. As well as that, it was in Newcastle’s cavernous, echoey Metro Radio Arena (or Telewest Arena as it was then). But, in spite of the odds against it, the gig was an electrifying experience. Even now, some ten and a half years, and three stones later, I still get goosebumps whenever I hear live recordings of ‘You Love Us’ or ‘A Design For Life’, and it’s because of that night. It cemented my love for the Manics, and made sure that for better or worse, I’ll always be a hopeless fanboy.
Green Day
You may struggle to believe it now, but I was pretty uncool in my early teenage years. Hence this gig, which I attended as part of a friend’s birthday, and which what I believe was the second encore (it seemed to go on for ever, anyway) so that we could get a lift from his mum. Hardcore! But, seriously we had possibly the worst seats in the house, and I hardly recognised a single song, even the really famous ones. Thankfully, it was before Warning came out, so while we did get ‘Minority’ (I think), the set was weighted towards Nimrod, the only Green Day album I have ever owned. Sadly, or perhaps fortunately, I don’t think this gig had any impact on my later muso-ing. I’ll leave that to Muse a few years later, with a girl who fancied me who turned out to be a lesbian. So uncool…
The Bluetones
The Bluetones, Middlesbrough Town Hall, 1999
As a teenager, my musical taste was considered to be quite strange by my peers. Indie music wasn’t exactly fashionable back at the turn of the millennium, as the sexy Strokes hadn’t come to everyone’s attention just yet. Fair enough, I did have a mild Kula Shaker obsession, but if you weren’t listening to So Solid Crew at the time then you were classed as a tad odd. The thought of seeing music live hadn’t really crossed my mind until I spotted a billboard for The Bluetones, who did a good turn in jingly-jangly mid-90s Britpop, playing live at Middlesbrough Town Hall.
Maybe I should have known better, having just turned 14, but the first few notes of The Bluetones’ set shocked me: what’s stuck with me since is that I remember thinking they must have been miming (thanks, CD:UK) as opening track ‘Last Of The Great Navigators’ sounded just like it did on record. Singer Mark Morriss’ charm and aplomb combined with a raft of catchy singles made for a solid performance. Possibly not as cool as nailing The Sex Pistols at The Free Trade Hall for your first gig, but not half bad.
Franz Ferdinand
Franz Ferdinand, Glasgow SECC, December 2004
Whenever I listen to Franz Ferdinand on record (which is, admittedly, now not very often) I come away with the feeling that the last 40 minutes of my life would have been much more enjoyable had it been live. Unfortunately, after several weeks of cajoling my parents and a road trip to Glasgow, I left ultimately disappointed that my theory had proven misguided. Their live show, to my 15-year-old mind, lacked any sense of departure from the album. The songs were played in a familiar order and lacked the extra energy that I had expected from seeing clips of other bands live.
This tour was in the wake of the eponymous, Mercury-winning debut album and perhaps this was the cause of my disappointment. I could theorise that perhaps the band lacked confidence in performing to such large crowds as a reason that there was little crowd interaction, possibly due to their startling rise to headlining status, however I feel this would be judging the band slightly harshly. What seems like a more likely cause is that the majority of the crowd seemed to lack knowledge of the majority of the album tracks, and as such they only ever seemed to enjoy the show when the radio friendly singles ‘Talk Me Out’ and ‘Matinee’ were played.
Perhaps the memories of more recent gigs have pushed the good memories of the night to the back of my mind, and as such have left me with an overly critical recollection of the gig. It certainly didn’t put me off wanting to see live music, and thus can’t have been as bad as some of the gigs I eventually saw; but I guess I just expected more from my first time.
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