I've been to a few concerts with different age groups in the audience. In the mid 90's I drove to Cardiff to see the original line-up Monkees. We were split about 50/50 between drunk students/twenty-somethings and little old ladies. A few years later I found myself amongst the old folks. I saw Muse at the pavilions when I was about 27, apart from me, Fast Eddie, and somebody's dad it was completely full of children, most of whom weren't old enough to use the bar.
This weekend I saw The Undertones on their 35th anniversary tour. They haven't stopped playing and touring since the first wave of punk in the late 70s, and they were fantastic. Half of the crowd were too young to remember it first time round, and the other half were in their early 50s. It was the balding, greying, and middle-aged-spreading fans who knew how to enjoy themselves. They were the ones who pushed their way to the front, they were the ones who drank like fishes, danced, pogoed, pushed and shoved, and who were bedraggled and running with sweat. When I see someone carried aloft by the crowd I usually think 'whatever's just fallen out of your pockets - you're never going to get that back' and 'don't you think these people would rather be watching the show than trying to support your weight'. On Saturday I found myself thinking 'sombody's going to get properly hurt - oh hell, I'm probably the soberest fist aider here'
Richard "teenage kicks" B