I don’t chain myself to broadcasting house to lobby for the future of a DAB radio station, nor do I own a Ramones t-shirt. I do, however, like music, and have been known to ‘gig’ from time to time.
I can’t profess to know who the up-and-coming artists are - my taste is pretty typical of a twenty-something to have lived through the 1990s. Oasis, loud, Kasabian, loud, with the former particularly satisfying when driving somewhere fast.
Add to that what I will have to call a guilty pleasure, even though I don’t feel remotely guilty, in Coldplay. Now I know it’s not cool to like them, because, for whatever reason, a lot of people don’t like them, including to my deep regret, Super Hans from Peep Show. But I think I’m old enough and reasoned enough to say I’ve seen them twice and they have provided the best live spectacle to pass my eyes.
But I don’t write this as a debate over just *why* Chris Martin insists on drawing things on himself.
Despite being pretty rigid in my taste, I have branched off to see other live bands, admittedly along a similar theme. The Courteeners - the frontman is trying desperately to be Liam Gallagher and sort of manages to come across as a bit of a douche - I like, as I do Shed Seven, although the thought of a 42nd reunion tour really doesn’t make me want to get my Disco Down.
Once I was a bit obsessed by Embrace but in 2006 they, like many others, failed to get Gerrard and Lampard to play together to the harmony of ‘World at your Feet’, and there have been others. The Kaiser Chiefs support Leeds so I forgive them for some of the bilge they come up with, while I do find the Pigeon Detectives thoroughly excellent.
I’ve seen them all, christ I’ve even stolen a £5 Jet t-shirt from outside of Leeds University, and enjoyed them all. And, save for one ludicrously hot night at Fibbers in York when everyone had to remove their clothes just to stay alive, have stayed on the periphery of the ‘action’, standing in a spot which serves as a thoroughfare for everyone at the gig, but not really caring.
On Friday, however, after a year out of ‘the game’, I went along to Doncaster Dome to see the Vaccines. The last time I’d been at the Dome was just a fortnight ago to see some Premier League Snooker which, unless I am mistaken, wasn’t attended by anyone wearing a scoop-neck t-shirt.
I’m not old, I’m 27, but I found myself largely despising almost everyone there apart from the people I was with. I even despised myself. We waited in the concourse for the utterly awful support band to go (as a side note, ahead of watching Jet at Leeds, a member of the support stopped singing to say to a woman on the front row: ‘no love, we will not fuck off’) and were surrounded by what seemed to be a general ratio of eight lads to two girls, all aged between 18 and 20.
They were all together, fresh out of GCSEs. The boys were wearing scoop t-shirts, had swept hair which was shaved around the sides and faux diamond earrings which had a long stem behind them. The lads were high on the whiff of ginger beer and the girls drunk in their presence.
Now, despite being happily married-to-be, I have rarely known what the secret is when it comes to women, however, I am fairly confident it’s not charging in to each other, calling each other a “fag c*nt” and then tossing up malteasers to catch in your mouth. Even I, the Mark Corrigan of the dating game, know that’s just not cool. And I think the girls did too, but they’d paid their £20 and they probably needed one of the lads’ dads to give them a ride home.
Inside the gig I could at least rid myself of the ‘boys’ as they went off to the front to ride the waves of similar-minded people. One of them, who my mate described as the “biggest c*nt” he had ever seen, was later spotted crowd-surfing, topless. I thought the initial assessment had been somewhat harsh, but I concurred now.
We slipped in at the back and were happily stood, waiting. We had swapped boys for men, the species not the band, and were now in amongst men my age going through a really wide repertoire of song. “Yorkshire, Yorkshire”. I love where I come from, but I don’t think Geoff Boycott spent eight million hours at the crease to one day allow a man with a t-shirt carrying an ‘I’m with Stupid’ motif to sing the word of the white rose.
I am being unkind, though, there were other songs too. “Lancashire, Wank Wank Wank”. That’s what Geoffrey would have wanted. “Oh Robin Van Persie..... Hmmm, not sure about that. I can’t remember the last time I went to a football match and burst into a rendition of Some Might Say.
Anyway, yes, the gig. The Vaccines came on and they were actually very good, despite the fact that the frontman’s stage presence amounted to coming on stage and shouting ‘DONCASTER’ before leaving with the word ‘DONCASTER’. The kids enjoyed it, they bounced, and I mean really bounced, to Wrecking Bar, which is possibly one of the most boisterous songs I’ve seen live.
The Vaccines have a repertoire of about 20 songs, all of which last two minutes each, so the whole thing was over pretty quickly. In between times, numerous collar-buttoned-up characters came over to the four of us, either suggesting we had barged them, offering us something from their hip flask or looking for a handshake. They spoke but we couldn’t hear them. For all I know, they were saying ‘I’m the biggest c*nt you will ever meet’. But that wasn’t true, because he was off crowd-surfing.
This all makes me sound really miserable. But I’m not. Today I will cook Sunday dinner while listening to the very same Vaccines songs, such was the amount to which I did enjoy them. But I won’t be wearing my coat, at the back of the room or avoiding cups of flying piss. What I mean is, save more Coldplay tours (I know) or an Oasis reunion, me and ‘gigging’, are over.
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