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Friday, March 14, 2008

Religion

My (ahem, cough, splutter) of an ex has finally paid me some money he has owed me for a considerable amount of time. It is a great relief. We now have the money to buy tickets to get the plane to the city to go to the V festival, which we bought tickets for ages ago. The Jesus and Mary Chain are playing, I am very excited. I saw them about 20 years ago, I was totally besotted with Jim Reid, I listened to little else. I bought everything of theirs I could get my hands on, of course it was all vinyl way back then, I even have a "picture disc" which has an interview on it. I listened to it once, then shelved it with my other treasures. I didn’t play my records, I taped them then put them away. They are all in mint condition, these days probably worth oh, I don’t know......bugger all?
All those years ago my friend and I arrived at the concert venue several hours before the doors opened, we weren’t the first there. There was a young man, resplendid with mohawk, chains and big boots, sitting on the footpath with a book titled "Social Anarchy" next to him, while he perused the Financial Times.
Eventually, when the doors opened, we got rushed and almost lost our great position, but managed to run inside and be right at the front, quite literally crushed against the stage - the bruises on my ribs lasted over a week. Died Pretty were the support band and they were great. Our anarchist friend went beserk, he was leaping around, stage diving, going absolutely spako and eventually collapsed and had to be carted out. Poor thing. I didn’t see him again and I don’t know if he actually got to see J&MC after all.
I was, of course, dressed to impress. I was wearing a very tight, low cut mini dress with knee high lace-up boots that had 4" stiletto heels. My hair was HUGE! Towards the interval the pain in my legs got so bad and the air was so thick with cigarette smoke that for one of the rare times in my life - I feinted.
My dear friend organised a chain of people to get a glass of water from the bar to me. I discovered that the air on the floor was much cooler and much less smokey than the air at head height, and I recovered reasonably quickly. I also found a watch. After I had revived I took my shoes off and was able to remain upright for the spectacular performance that I had come for.
The boys were late coming on and were obviously pissed off about something. Life? They wandered about on stage without communicating with each other or acknowleging the audience. They played several songs, then mid song Jim just walked off. Eventually when the other band members realised he had gone, they dropped their instruments and walked off too. That was it. I was elated, I thought it was brilliant. Their sullen disrespect for their fans and their arrogantly short set impressed me immensely. Most of all I was over the moon because Jim, at one point, had looked me right in the eyes and held my raptured gaze for a few seconds. It was pure magic.
In later years when J&MC lost their niave, raw grunginess I lost interest in them; I moved on. I discovered PJ Harvey. I listened exclusively to women for many years having decided I was sick of hearing what men had to say/sing about.
My music for most of the nineties consisted of PJ, Kate Bush, Sinead O’Conner, Cyndi Lauper, Siouxsie, Lene Lovich and few others. I immersed myself in the gutteral screams of PJ, the ethereal beauty of Kate, Sinead’s power, Lene and Cyndi’s shrill individuality and Siouxsie was the bread and butter that all the others were served on.
I have seen PJ three times, she is brilliant, although I didn’t like her last album. Kate, well, only a handfull of very lucky people have ever seen her perfom live and sadly her last album was rubbish. Cyndi I have seen three times now, she is fabulous. Siouxsie I have seen perform with the Banshees and with The Creatures, she is also fabulous and I suspect has a very scary looking portrait in her attic. Sinead is this week playing Melbourne and Sydney, she has never toured Australia before. Unfortunately I didn’t find out about her tour until after I had purchased tickets for Cyndi and I couldn’t do both - unreasonable financially and for the child. I am very sad I won’t get to see her, I know Sinead went totally loopy and probably still is, but I believe she is doing a mix of old and new stuff on this tour and the opportunity to hear her magnificent voice live would have been worth the wierdness.
I have always loved music, it has been an important part of my adult life and is no doubt responsible for my bad hearing. It makes perfect sense that I have married a man who owns over 3000 CDs and it also makes sense that while discussing future renovations we are more concerned about the wiring and placement of the stereo and speakers than the heating.
My love of live music has been diminished ever so slightly over the years by the behaviour of the crowds these days - the commeradere of old is gone. If I feint at J&MC this time the best I can hope for is to not get trampled, I doubt total strangers would assist in the procurement of water or even help me to my feet. Fortunately with age comes a certain amount of wisdom and a love of sensible shoes.

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