I haven’t really been to many concerts. I’m not entirely sure why. Maybe, I’ve been busy. Those I have attended read like the top ten gayest bands of all time: Erasure, Pet Shop Boys, Madonna, Prince, Erasure, Mel C, Britney. It is all rather uncool. Even at the time, it wasn’t trendy. Now it’s utterly inexplicable and verging on the unjustifiable. It’s not even as though I’ve been Making a Statement. It’s just coincidence: I happen to like gay disco music. And Spandex. Obviously. I am clearly a very confused young man. Well two thirds of that statement is correct.
Still, there’s nothing like being mildly ashamed of one’s earlier musical tastes. I don’t have the decency to be as embarrassed as I ought.
Tonight though was different. Tonight was an opportunity to redress the balance. Tonight I nail my colours to an entirely different mast. Although I suspect it’s not improved my standing in the cool stakes. Tonight I went to a joint Whitesnake/ Def Leppard concert – a band famous for having sex during the guitar solos.
It was T’s night, really. She’s never really abandoned her youthful tastes. For her, this was a dream come true. Had we been able to make next week’s gigs, she would have died and gone to Heaven – Thunder were joining too. I’m already out of my depth.
Obviously I’d spent most of the 80s wearing clothes that were marginally too tight but the whole Rock/ Metal phenomena hadn’t entirely passed me by. I do own a Whitesnake LP. It’s in the attic. T has every song they’ve ever released. There’s quite a lot of them.
The bands are celebrating 30 years on this tour. I hadn’t appreciated the significance of that until we sat down. Everyone was old. Really, uncoolly old. And not prepared to admit it. There wasn’t a dignified person in the whole place. There were some grey-haired head-bangers. The superannuated man next to me had a hearing aid. Everyone had more wrinkles than an old leather jacket. Even the rockstars made inappropriately coarse and embarrassing remarks (although I suspect there’s still enough glamour around them to justify some prescription Viagra during the instrumentals).
Still, we had a grand time. I even recognised one of the songs. And we all left early enough to catch the last bus home. With our free bus passes.
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