I TEND to go to a lot of gigs as part of my job as a radio DJ.
In fact, it’s fair to say that since I started working at the radio station I have seen more live bands in the last year than I had in the previous 25.
Some have been good, a few have been amazing but some have been truly, mind-blowingly awful.
Sometimes it’s an under-rehearsed band who are all over the place, or some arrogant bunch who think they’re Led Zepplin yet in an X Factor competition would rank lower than your drunk uncle singing the Northern Lights Of Old Aberdeen.
Occasionally, it’s the post-punk political rock bands who scream righteously at me about George W Bush not being good for the world.
But if there is one thing that I have learned over the course of the last year, it is that some people who pay good money to go and see a band play don’t necessarily want to listen to the band.
I saw Laura Marling at the Tunnels the other week. Anyone who listens to my show knows that I’m a bit of a Laura Marling superfan. Seriously, both my producer and my girlfriend have come to accept that there may be a time when her record company send me a court order and I’m not allowed within 200 feet of anyone called Laura.
I mention this because maybe it means I’m biased or over sensitive, but the Laura Marling gig last week, where she was supporting Malcolm Middleton, was one of the hottest tickets in the Aberdeen indie gig calendar.
People were being turned away from the door and the Tunnels was more packed than I have ever seen it before. And yet a fair amount of people spent the gig chatting. Not even whispering. Your actual open-mouth-and-loud-word-come-out conversation.
There would be a quiet bit in one of Laura’s songs and you could hear people behind you talking about what they were going to do after the gig.
Seriously. It was like, ‘Yeah. Laura Marling she’s really good isn’t she? That’s her done two songs; shall we get some tequila shots and go to a nightclub now?’
How can these sort of people live with themselves?
If this is you then please don’t ever go to a gig again.
In fact you’re clearly socially inept and should probably never leave the house.
My plan is to put together a little group made up of aggrieved punters and disgruntled musicians.
Then we’ll find out where these chat people live. We’ll wait. And then when their stupid fat talky heads eventually go all sleepy on them, we’ll creep in through the window and hit play on my ready-made compilation CD of all the crap bands I’ve heard over the last year.
We’ll do it at such a brain-shatteringly loud volume that every time these simple-minded gig ruiners ever close their eyes, all they will be able to hear is some wannabe punk band rhyming “George W Bush” with “bombs go whoosh”.
If this sounds like your sort of thing then please feel free to join me.
When we’re finished with them, we’ll start on the people who have no rhythm but none the less think it’s okay to clap along to the music. You know who you are.
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