An Interesting Tuesday Night

For those of you that don't know, my partner, the elusive A, works in music. I'll keep it that vague because, well because that's his line of work not mine. Anyhoo. Sometimes he gets invited to gigs to report on them and occasionally he receives two tickets and I have to go too. I make that sound like a bad thing. It's not. I've seen some incredible performers but last night was going to be something completely different.

I was already tired (8pm when we left...I know I'm 30 now it's ridiculous) and reluctant to go. I was told hip hop/rap. So of course I'm thinking what the hell am I going to wear? Someone suggested some $ bling and I did actually contemplate making some bling out of cardboard and tin foil but then I thought......nah.

Because we were on the guest list we had to go to some shady back entrance (the stage door, though it looked creepy as hell with it's one white light) and we were allowed in at front stage left. We arrived about ten minutes before they were due to go on so I skipped of to the toilet. Never have I seen a gig toilet so empty. Sadly they were all wet on the floor and with no hooks on the door for bags and coats it was an interesting one handed attempt to undo my button, which I had to give in to and in the end shove the handle of the bag in my mouth, gripping it with my teeth to avoid coat or bag wetness. There was also the desperation not to let my jeans wallow in the wet. All in all a rather stressful toilet outing despite no queue.

I guess the first thing you noticed out there was a weird demographic. There were a couple of older people near us that were clearly also on the guest list/with the label etc. A couple of mums that were accompanying younger children. But the rest of the audience were mainly 16-20 year olds. The gigs I go to are normally people my age and above so this at times felt like being in a room full of 4 year olds that had eaten all the blue smarties, snorted icing sugar and overdosed on calpol. Dear lord they were loud and giddy and....did I mention loud? Jeez.

Continuing with the kiddie theme there were streamers ejected over the crowd; ticker tape flashed out a couple of times and balloons. It was only missing the jelly and ice cream and that would have been one pre-school party. Whoop!

I was told the artists only had one album so it was likely to be a short show but they were also cunningly deceptive to their sugar induced fans. In between each song there would be at least a five minute chat or interlude of some description, or some story he wanted to tell you. And that is how you make one album last for 80 minutes. But I did find myself thinking, I don't want your life story just rap for fucks sake. We were given his political stance, stories about rehab and more but it almost didn't matter what he said, the throng of giddy kids would have screamed at anything. Honestly, he could have said, "I fucked my mother whist my sister watched." And they would have only screamed harder. It was irrelevant what he said, just that he was saying something and to them.

Man they can really make a racket. They certainly weren't using their indoor voices.

What often gets me about rap music is that the hook of the song, that melodic wonderbite and usually the song's selling point has nothing to do with the rapper. We were treated to a couple of guest vocalists and their vocal bits were the song. I almost didn't notice the rapping. I guess I'd just find that a bit weird if my supposed 'guest vocalist' actually became the star of the song. Surely these people have big egos? Or maybe they don't mind sharing the limelight? Eh. Who knows.

There were a few times when I closed my eyes and hoped when I opened them I would see Vanilla Ice and find myself in the 90's. Didn't happen.

The whole call and response with the audience. "Can I get a Hell Yeah?"  "Hell Yeah!" It's old now. So stop it. Please. Again I'm thinking....children's party.

There was a big screen at the back of the stage showing a random variety of visuals which were both interesting and distracting from what was happening on stage. The artists herald from Seattle so when they put up pictures from the Olympic Peninsula I was like, "I've been there." Ruby Beach. First Beach. (La Push to the Twilighters out there.) Lots of snowy tree shots and it was like some of the sweeping forest shots in the first Twilight movie. Made me giggle anyway. Some great holiday flashback moments as well though. Love Seattle and the Olympic Peninsula.

Well I thought I wouldn't know any of the songs as I mainly live in the past, musically, but it turns out I knew 3 or 4 of them but again mainly by their guest vocaled melodic lines, not the actual rapper/DJ artists. Ah well. At least I didn't feel completely ancient.

There were of course the three 'attitude' dancers which you would not mess with if you know what's good for you. But all those kids in such high spirits can make for quite a sweaty room. Eww.

On the tube back I found some interesting adverts:

'What if everyone on this escalator was single?'

Fuck off! If everyone were single it would be like some fuckin' meat market, with everyone trying to get a look at you. What a stupid advert. And what was even more funny was that practically everyone on our escalator was in a couple. Ha.

'Looking for donor sperm?'

Why in this, looking for sperm ad is there a baby with a floppy hat on chewing it's finger? The baby isn't looking for sperm or at least I hope not. There's starting young and then there's starting young. Jeez. They should have had a woman looking out, surveying with one hand shielding her eyes (the classic, where are you, searching stance) looking for sperm. That would have been more appropriate.

And the advert next to it said something about 'park bum clenchers'. Bums and sperm right next to each other. Intentional?

Anyhoo. It did make for an interesting Tuesday night. I hope you had one too.

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