Skip to main content

On the merits of rock concerts

Someone whose gig I would go to
Musically speaking, I was a strange child. The first album I ever bought, age 11, was Elgar's Dream of Gerontius (Barbirolli, I think). To be fair, we were doing it in the school choir, I didn't just didn't randomly feel the urge to buy it. I was 15 when I first bought a contemporary record - the Beatles' Abbey Road.

Similarly, while all my friends were going to gigs by Tyrannosaurus (sic) Rex and Van der Graaf Generator, I...wasn't. I just wasn't interested. Since then the closest I have come to a rock concert has been Cliff Richard (don't laugh - I didn't go voluntarily), the Flying Pickets and Al Stewart. (Now that was a brilliant gig. Next time Mr Stewart is touring in the UK I will be along there like the proverbial gig ferret.)

Now I've always said, if there's one band I really would like to see live it's Pink Floyd. I love their music and they allegedly gave great shows. Realistically it is never going to happen, so when it turned out that acclaimed tribute band Brit Floyd were coming to a theatre near us, I jumped at the chance and bought tickets.

The gig was last night. And I nearly didn't go. When it came to it, on the day, I wasn't sure I could be bothered. What I think it really was is that I rarely have enthusiasm for sitting listening to music (unless it is the brilliant Mr Stewart). I normally only do it in the car. I can't work to music, for instance - I just find it an irritating distraction. So despite paying nearly £60 for two tickets, I almost left them to get on with it and stayed at home.

However I did go, and I have to say they were brilliant. Ever since mistakenly buying a live Yes album I've always been a little worried about live performance of complex contemporary music, but Brit Floyd really hit the classics (and they did many of them) spot on. It was visually impressive and musically excellent. The only time I raised an eyebrow is I didn't remember a Floyd piece that had a reference to the Doctor Who theme in it, but a quick web search tells me there is one, on Meddle, one of the few of their albums I don't have.

I'm not sure I'd go to one of their gigs again - it's one of those 'I've done it now' things. But I'm really glad I went. In case you don't believe decent Floyd-a-like can be done, here's Brit Floyd doing Money:




Image from Wikipedia

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's recent gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some ex

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5.  However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor

Which idiot came up with percentage-based gradient signs

Rant warning: the contents of this post could sound like something produced by UKIP. I wish to make it clear that I do not in any way support or endorse that political party. In fact it gives me the creeps. Once upon a time, the signs for a steep hill on British roads displayed the gradient in a simple, easy-to-understand form. If the hill went up, say, one yard for every three yards forward it said '1 in 3'. Then some bureaucrat came along and decided that it would be a good idea to state the slope as a percentage. So now the sign for (say) a 1 in 10 slope says 10% (I think). That 'I think' is because the percentage-based slope is so unnatural. There are two ways we conventionally measure slopes. Either on X/Y coordiates (as in 1 in 4) or using degrees - say at a 15° angle. We don't measure them in percentages. It's easy to visualize a 1 in 3 slope, or a 30 degree angle. Much less obvious what a 33.333 recurring percent slope is. And what's a 100% slope