Being the youngest person at a gig
A seated gig for aging fans, reflections on aging, and musings on authenticity at a Richard Thompson concert.
I pulled the ticket out of my pocket and showed it to the worried-looking official standing outside the auditorium doors. “The support act is on right now”, she told me. “You’ll have to wait by the side till the song finishes”.
I’d forgotten that this was a seated concert. She pulled the heavy doors open for me and I crept inside, only to be quickly intercepted by another concerned official who ushered me to some temporary seating “until the support act finishes”.
I sat and took in my surroundings. The venue was Birmingham Symphony Hall, somewhere I’d been a couple of times for orchestral performances, but never for a folk-rock gig. I was here to see guitar virtuoso Richard Thompson (of Fairport Convention fame). I craned my neck to the stalls to get a sense of where my seat was, and was momentarily blinded by the glare of the stage lights reflecting off the bald heads of six hundred retired folk music blokes.
1966 and all that
I like old music. Most of the stuff I listen to was recorded before I was born, and I still feel like I haven’t caught up on the must-hear records of the 60s and 70s before I can get into the 80s, let alone anything released this decade. Richard Thompson turned 75 a month ago.
So did most of this audience, by the looks of it. The opening act finished and everyone filed out—slowly—for the interval. I ambled over to my seat clutching the pint I’d bought before coming in, and was vaguely aware of a few stares and—were those grumbles?—double takes as I made my way to the centre of my allocated row.
Most of the people milling around were elderly couples, out for an evening of music. These tickets weren’t cheap: when I was at the height of my punk fandom I had a self-imposed rule that I wouldn’t pay more than £20 for gig tickets, no matter how much I loved the artist. I’d read about bands like Fugazi insisting on $10 tickets and all-ages shows everywhere they played, and I couldn’t think of anything more authentic.
Now I’m pushing 40, I’ve somehow allowed this threshold to triple, and found myself paying £65 to see Mr. Thompson on a grey Monday in Birmingham.
Please remain seated
The crowd walked (or hobbled) back to their seats and I began to take notice of how some of them were dressed. Most were in classic Marks & Spencer casualwear, but a few clear rabble-rousers were defiantly clad in leather jackets, too-small band t-shirts and even earrings and ponytails, white and proud. I wondered if this was what it meant to truly live an authentic fan life and commit to the look, even until retirement. These guys were the only ones who really looked like they were having fun.
Richard Thompson and his band walked onstage and began their set, which was surprisingly loud for what I’d assumed was going to be mostly acoustic balladry. Instead we got two hours of guitar solos, heavy riffing and crashing drums. I was perplexed, then, to look around the sea of pink and white heads and notice that none of them were moving.
Seated gigs are weird enough: you don’t really want to “chair dance”, but if you stand up then you need to be confident everyone around you is going to do it too. This was—firmly—a non-standing gig. But not a soul in my eyeline was so much as nodding their head or tapping their feet. I wondered how it felt for Thompson, looking out at this sea of fans who’d no doubt followed him everywhere – but couldn’t seem to return any of the energy he was giving them.
Let fury have the hour, anger can be power
I suddenly began to feel self-conscious. Nobody else around me had any alcohol; had I broken some kind of unwritten rule? Lounging in my seat with casual trainers and an IPA, nodding my head like a beatnik… was I an interloper here? Maybe I wasn’t experiencing this gig like I was supposed to.
But Richard Thompson’s music is deep and harrowing. He sings of loss, pain, solitude and anger. His playing is beautiful but it’s raw, and for someone of his years he’s still got a snarl and a rage to his vocals. I didn’t think there was a single “right” way to experience his performance, but I realised that my way wasn’t “wrong”, either.
“You grow up and you calm down”, sang Joe Strummer. It’s true, and perhaps inevitable – even the Clash grew up and tried to play jazz fusion. These people had probably done their time in the folk clubs and shebeens, and earned the right to retire into Seasalt knitwear and leaving before the encore so they can “beat the traffic”. Who was I to judge?
But I did find myself revising my opinion of the 70 year olds dressed as 20 year olds. They had edge, they looked interesting – and they were the only people I could see responding to the music at all. Maybe this stuff can speak to you forever, if you let it – and I hope that’s what Richard Thompson could see from his place on the stage.
Mini-feels this week
Now we are one
My daughter turned one this week, so between her and her five-year-old brother, this probably means I’ve got six years’ parenting experience. Much like dogs, I think “parent years” should be counted at a higher rate than regular years, because Christ knows they’ve aged me more than the calendar should imply. Call it a dozen years and you’ve probably explained the premature grey hairs and visible wrinkles.
It’s amazing, though, doing it all again. It’s still hard, still exhausting and can seem endless despite your hard-won knowledge from the first time around. But moments like this give you the capacity to look back at how far you’ve come and really appreciate it. In seemingly the same week, her upper teeth have started to appear (to match her two on the bottom), and she seems days away from taking her first unaided steps. My baby’s nearly a toddler and I feel like I’m seeing her, for the first time, as she’s going to really be. I love it.